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Voicing: SATB divisi, a cappella
Item: 2025.03
ISMN: 9790900969965
Duration: 4:00 min
PDF file: 16 pages to print at size A4, includes front cover, information about the work and composer, music pages, back cover
Composer’s note
It is an appealingly quirky song “lamenting the captivity of masterpieces destined to spend eternity locked away in museums”*. Spektor has been described as “an artist whose sense of whimsy never excludes the possibility of real-world despair”**. ‘All the Rowboats’ is certainly an unusual story for a pop song, ripe for a playful choral arrangement. With Spektor’s Russian heritage, it seemed appropriate to ‘Promenade’ with Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, while all those rowboats endlessly “trying to row away” called for the round-and-round of the well-known children’s canon ‘Row row row your boat’, “but in a brushstroke of paint they are stuck”.
Why choose this arrangement? It is composed for intermediate to advanced mixed adult choirs (SATB divisi) without any accompaniment. In a contemporary college a cappella style, the sopranos lightly ‘row row row’ over the rhythmic bass line while the altos lead the melody, with harmonic interludes. It’s a fun, storytelling mash-up that builds to a somewhat chaotic climax, closing with the drifting away of the boats still rowing. It would be an energetic, diverting piece in any choral performance program.
* Lindsey, 2012, ‘Art Elsewhere: Regina Spektor’s All the Rowboats’, Things Worth Describing
** Deusner, S, 2013, ‘Regina Spektor: High Fidelity’, American Songwriter
Performances
Please register performances or recordings of this work with the appropriate performing rights body, and here to notify the composer.