Project: Composition of a cantata setting of the poem Evangeline, by Henry W. Longfellow, abridged by Stuart Laughton. For soprano voice, trumpet solo and chamber orchestra (consisting of flute, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, one percussionist, harp and small string section). The work was commissioned by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra (Simon Streatfeild, conductor), for the Laughton-Humphreys Duo. Funding was provided by the Canada Council. The work is to be presented for the first time in Winnipeg on April 6,1994, with the composer present. Longfellow's poem is considered to be one of his greatest achievements, and tells of the trials of the French-descended Acadian people of eighteenth-century Nova Scotia (Acadie), after being expelled by the British colonial Governor in 1755, and their subsequent odyssey to French protection in Louisiana, to become the Cajuns of today. The blighted betrothal of the maid Evangeline to Gabriel is the focus of the tale; their separation at the wrecking of their village and their subsequent flight, to be united only in old age, when Gabriel is on his deathbed. The musical language is typical of Forsyth's style, with a mixture of tonal and atonal harmonic idioms. The dactylic hexameter of Longfellow's poem has dictated some extended uses of compound meters, yet the composer has succeeded in producing a great variety of metric feeling, through the use of melisma, recitative, and so on. The use of the voice is conventional, but with many instances of speech, half-speech, and whispering, all covering an extended range of g – eb'''. The solo trumpet part entails the use of C and Eb trumpets, flugelhorn, comet and natural trumpet in Eb. In addition to the live performers on-stage, a women's unison chorus is employed in a prerecorded version of the hymn, "Sacré coeur de Jésus," sung in French, at the point where the village of Grand-Pré is being burnt, while an offstage snare-drum is also used in the same scene, as the villagers are marched to the shore. Superimposition of textures and tonalities has helped to create, at dramatic points, a counterpoint of rich layering, while the need to hear and understand the text and allow the voice to soar is always met.