This haiku is by New Zealand poet David Keen.

Spring moon. A sickle.
Tides ebb and flow. Salt. Silver.
Still sand and water.

I set David’s haiku to music in four different ways to accommodate the various musical skills and confidences of a typical group of 13-14 year olds studying Japanese Society and Cultures in their Social Studies or Humanities classes in New Zealand.

The sung vocal part in Spring Moon 1 is suitable for someone with musical and vocal confidence, but the instrumental part can be played on any instrument, including as here, a flute, or as in earlier performances by a non-musician on a glockenspiel, just following the letter names in a rhythm of their choosing – the musician singing would adapt the free rhythms to suit.

Spring Moon 2 can be performed by any one person or group, speaking in a dramatic or declamatory style, but with a more complex instrumental accompaniment playable by a competent musician.

The vocal part of Spring Moon 3 is identical to the previous version, but the accompanying percussion music is much more straightforward and could be played by anyone.

Spring Moon 4 is purely vocal with no singing whatsoever. I’ve used it as a choir warm-up and have facilitated performances by several classes-ful and even an adult-workshop-ful of non-musicians.

For a sample of the score or to purchase a copy, have a look here:

Dave and I delivered this work as a workshop at the 1996 Annual Conference of the Federation of Social Studies Associations in Wellington, New Zealand. The workshop was entitled “Accessing Japanese Culture through Poetry and Music”. We performed the four versions ourselves to emphasise the point that there was something there for students who were either musically confident or not, and rammed the point home, by encouraging all the participants to join in with version 4. The scores and accompanying activities were published in the Conference Proceedings booklet.