The Players ask for a Blessing

  • for choir SSA unaccompanied

  • Duration 3' 50"

Words

by W B Yeats

commissioned by Concordia Youth Chorale 2009

this piece won the first International Choral Music Competition "Festa de la Música Coral" Barcelona (female-voice choirs category) in 2015

Availability

choral photocopying licence for sale from this website
up to 25 copies for GBP35.00 or USD70.00
up to 50 copies for GBP40.00 or USD80.00
up to 100 copies for GBP45.00 or USD90.00

Recordings

online recording

online live recording:

https://soundcloud.com/quelchoir/the-players-ask-ayres

Text

Three voices together:

Hurry to bless the hands that play,
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O lay the shrilly trumpet down,
Though drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.

First voice:

Maybe they linger by the way.
One gathers up his purple gown;
One leans and mutters by the wall -
He dreads the weight of mortal hours.

Second voice:

O no, O no! they hurry down
Like plovers that have heard the call.

Third voice:

O kinsmen of the Three in One,
O kinsmen bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on
When all this heavy history's done;
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.

Three voices together:

The proud and careless notes live on
But bless our hands that ebb away.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)