Music to hear

song for high voices (two-part) and accompaniment

Duration 7'

Words by William Shakespeare

This song featured as the final movement of the Gallions Symphony, a composition project at Gallions Primary School, Beckton, 2003, funded by the Performing Right Society Foundation and by the National Foundation for Youth Music

hear/see Paul's "Music to hear" (abridged version)
sung by the Bradford Girls' Choir at the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod 2009
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE6vjazNCoU
(it's the second piece, starting 2' 45" into the clip)

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Text

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark, how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each, by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee, - "Thou single wilt prove none."

(Sonnet 8)

Categories choral - high voices accompanied; vocal - two or more solo voices