Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music
Soprano and chamber orchestra: 1.1.1.1.1 1.1
percussion, piano/harp, 4.3.3.2.2
Duration:
18’
2006
First Performance: Orchestra of
the Swan, cond. David Curtis, soprano- Claire Booth,
Kingsley College, Redditch, UK
Four songs
using Shakespearean text taken from the collection
‘The Passionate Pilgrim’. In between each of the
four songs there are instrumental interludes, or
perhaps small-scale overtures, which use the same
chorale theme as their base and mix material from
the forthcoming song. The songs themselves have
rather differing characters: The first one (a
version of which features in Shakespeare’s Love’s
Labour’s Lost) ‘On a day (alack the day)!’ tells the
story of love at first sight; the second ‘Live with
me, and be my love’ is a celebration of love; the
third ‘As is fell upon a day’ is sorrowful and
compares the lover’s pain with that of awounded
nightingale and the last ‘Words are easy like the
wind’ tells of the fortune of having good friends.
The cycle was awarded the 2007 King’s College
Adam Prize. It was commissioned by and dedicated to
the Orchestra of the Swan, on the year of their 10th
anniversary
Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music
(selection)
I.
On a day (alack the day!)
Love, whose month was ever May,
Spied a blossom
passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen,
'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth
he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might
triumph so!
But, alas! my hand hath sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack,
for youth unmeet,
Youth, so apt to pluck a sweet,
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an
Ethiope were;
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.
II.
Live with me,
and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures
prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.
There will
we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed
their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There will I make
thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant
posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
A belt of
straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber
studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Then live with me and be my love.
LOVE'S ANSWER.
If that the world and love were young,
And truth
in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty
pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be
thy love.
III.
As it fell upon a day
In the
merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap,
and birds did sing,
Trees did grow, and plants
did spring;
Everything did banish moan,
Save
the nightingale alone:
She, poor bird, as all
forlorn,
Lean'd her breast up-till a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to
hear it was great pity:
Fie, fie, fie, now would
she cry;
Teru, teru, by and by:
That to hear
her so complain,
Scarce I could from tears
refrain;
All thy fellow-birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing.
Even so, poor bird,
like thee,
None alive will pity me.
IV.
Words are easy like the wind;
Faithful friends
are hard to find.
Every man will be thy friend,
Whilst thou hast wherewith to spend;
But if store
of crowns be scant,
No man will supply thy want.
If that one be prodigal,
Bountiful they will him
call:
And with such-like flattering,
'Pity but
he were a king.'
He that is thy frend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need;
If thou sorrow, he
will weep;
If thou wake, he cannot sleep:
Thus
of every grief in heart
He with thee doth bear a
part.
These are certain signs to know
Faithful
friend from flattering foe.
|
|
(Extract may take a few seconds to load)
Tabakova- Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music
Playing: Song IV
|
