How The World Was Made

  • a choral version of music from Just So: Tegumai's Tales (an opera-musical for all ages)

  • Duration 7'

Words

by Sarah Grange, based on Rudyard Kipling

Availability

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

Text

Here we are
at the world's beginning,
when all things are possible
and everything is unknown,
and we make up even the idea of knowing.

I see the essence,
I see the heart,
I feel the beat of it
through my feet and fingertips,

and I give that beat to you
I give this heart to you...

We bring shade, we bring fruit, we bring summer leaf and winter wood, and green spring bud.
We bring views, we help shape the land, snowy peaks and grassy plains, and wide terrains.
We bring rain, we bring water, pure silver threads that lace the earth, and promise birth.

Here, here you are, you are you, you are free.
Here is the grass, here on the ground, so good and sweet and green.
Here are the trees, see how they blow in the breeze.
Here are the mountains, hills and valleys,
rivers, lakes and streams,
and life flows through them all and...

Here are the animals that dwell in the dark
and here are the animals that live in the light
and here are those that like to wade in the wet
and here are those that like to dance in the dry
and here are the creatures that smile in the sun
and here are the creatures that sing in the snow
and all the world is theirs

I give you the world in which to play.
I give you the sea, the land and sky.
I give you these songs to sing the earth alive.

Each voice sings its own song, to the canyon and the mountain and the sea.
Singing to the forest and the prairie and the desert and the sky.
Singing to the snowfall and the sunrise and the sunset.

Each voice sings its own song, to the canyon and the rainfall and the mountain and the sea.
Singing to the forest and the marshes and the prairie and the desert and the sky.
Singing to the snowfall and the sunrise and the sunset.