Music to hear

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
optional SATB parts were later added at the request of Jo McNally and the BBC Singers, for music education workshops and performances 

sheet music (PDF master score with permission to print or download an authorised number of copies) available via this website: GBP 1.50 per print-out

this work features on the High CD - click for details

• Blow blow thou winter wind
• Daisies
• Fairies' Song
• The lusty horn
• Icicles
• So hallow'd and so gracious is the time
• Take O take those lips away
• This sceptr'd isle
• All the world's a stage

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)

• choral - mixed voices accompanied
• choral - high voices accompanied
• vocal - two or more solo voices