Wedding cantata (Peter Bird)

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  • (Posted 2017-04-06)  CPDL #43915:        (Sibelius 5)
Editor: Peter Bird (submitted 2017-04-06).   Score information: Letter, 39 pages, 504 kB   Copyright: CC BY SA
Edition notes: First 28 pages are the choral score; last 11 pages are a separate piano part.

General Information

Title: Wedding cantata
Composer: Peter Bird
Lyricist: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Rumi, William Butler Yeatscreate page

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: SecularCantata

Language: English
Instruments: Piano

First published: 2017
Description:  Dedicated to Jean M. Campbell, my lovely wife since 1972.

Four songs (by the four poets listed above):
1. Marriage morning
2. It's all I have to bring today
3. The privileged lovers
4. A Faery song
Total length ~13 minutes.
Suitable for either a wedding performance (e.g., by 4 soloists and piano) or a choral concert performance.

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text

1. Marriage morning
Light, so low upon earth,
You send a flash to the sun.
Here is the golden close of love;
All my wooing is done.
Oh, all the woods and the meadows:
Woods where we hid from the wet,
Stiles where we stayed to be kind,
Meadows in which we met!
Light, so low in the vale,
You flash and lighten afar,
For this is the golden morning of love
And you are his morning star.
Flash, I am ready; I start
By meadow and stile and wood.
Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart,
Into my heart and my blood!
Heart, are you great enough
For a love that never tires?
O heart, are you great enough for love?
(I have heard of thorns and briers.)
Over the thorns and briers,
Over the meadows and stiles,
Over the world to the end of it;
Flash of a million miles.

2. It's all I have to bring today
It’s all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

3. The privileged lovers
The moon is now a dancer
at this festival of love;
This dance of light,
This sacred blessing.
Divine love beckons us
to a world arising new
for these lovers with their
eyes of fiery passion.
Chosen ones who
have surrendered!
Once only a light;
now they are sunbeams reunited!
They have left behind
the world of foolish games.
Divine love beckons us
to a world arising new
for these lovers with their
eyes of fiery passion!

4. A Faery song
WE who are old, old and gray,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gray,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.