Colin Tanser's 'Everyman'

In addition to a variety of music we will be working on with master teacher Anna Prokhovnik Cooper during the 2024 Lyre Conference this August, we will prepare and perform Colin Tanser’s Everyman with the participants in our Youth Program forming the children’s choir. 

Colin Tanser wrote Everyman, a three movement piece for lyre and children’s choir, for the International Lyre Conference in Belfast in 2006.  Since then, it has been performed at schools and in conferences all over the world.

The medieval morality play “Everyman”, by Anonymous, outlines the difficult life pilgrimage of the main character, Everyman.  At the beginning, Everyman receives these comforting words from the character, Knowledge: “Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, in thy utmost need to go by thy side.”

Everyman

The title page of Tanser’s piece uses this quote as an epigraph and then outlines the movements and the sources for the words of Everyman’s journey.

EVERYMAN

“Everyman, I will go with thee,
And be thy guide,
In thy utmost need to go by thy side.”

Music for Lyres and Children’s Voices
1.The Journey – 2.Strange Land – 3.Rainbow
Words:  Adaptations of Psalms 133 & 137
And William Wordsworth’s Rainbow

Beautiful songs for the children's choir appear in each movement, accompanied by lyres throughout.  Everyman is a beautiful and memorable piece of music.

We invite our readers to listen to a selection from Everyman with children singing, accompanied by 200 lyres, in our 2021 LANA Blog post from July 20, 2021, In Memory of Colin Tanser.

Each participant in the 2024 Lyre Conference will receive a copy of the Everyman lyre part that has been selected on the registration form according to ability level and lyre range designation.  The LANA store also has the complete score with all parts available for purchase here.

In addition, hard copies of the full score will be available at the conference itself.