To me fair friend

by William Shakespeare

programme note: "particular ideas from Shakespeare's sonnet I have tried to reflect in my composition are the passing of time (ticks of a clock, or rain-drops), recollections of past beauty (changes of style between lush/consonant and harsher/dissonant harmonies), and sudden contrasts between time standing still and moving on, and between positive and negative emotions (full choral textures vs just one or two isolated notes, unison vs harmony, homophony vs counterpoint)"

sheet music (PDF master score with permission to print or download an authorised number of copies) available via this website: GBP 1.75 per print-out

• Icicles
• Music to hear
• If music be the food of love [choir SSATB unaccompanied]

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were, when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived:
   For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred;
   Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead. 

(William Shakespeare: Sonnet 104)

• choral - mixed voices unaccompanied