Five Songs for Soprano - Song-Cycle, Op. 14
Voice - Digital Sheet Music

Piano,Vocal,Voice - Level 3 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1314982

Composed by William Kersten. Classical,Opera,Romantic Period. Score. 23 pages. William Kersten #903730. Published by William Kersten (A0.1314982).

Inspired by the Victorian and Romantic poetry of Christina Rossetti, Anne Bronte, Thomas Hood and Thomas Beddoes, the Five songs form a cycle of joy, sadness, love, death and exultation.   The music is scored in two versions: Normal Vocal Range and Wide Vocal Range.

1. A Birthday 
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) 

My heart is like a singing bird 
Whose nest is in a watered shoot; 
My heart is like an apple-tree 
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; 
My heart is like a rainbow shell 
That paddles in a halcyon sea; 
My heart is gladder than all these 
Because my love is come to me. 
Raise me a dais of silk and down; 
Hang it with vair and purple dyes; 
Carve it in doves and pomegranates, 
And peacocks with a hundred eyes; 
Work it in gold and silver grapes, 
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; 
Because the birthday of my life 
Is come, my love is come to me. 

2. Echo 
Christina Rossetti

Come to me in the silence of the night; 
Come in the speaking silence of a dream; 
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright 
As sunlight on a stream; 
Come back in tears, 
Oh memory, hope, love of finished years. 
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, 
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, 
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet; 
Where thirsting longing eyes 
Watch the slow door 
That opening, letting in, lets out no more. 
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live 
My very life again though cold in death - 
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give 
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: 
Speak low, lean low, 
As long ago, my love, how long ago. 

3. "There is dew...”
Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

There is dew for the flowret 
And honey for the bee, 
And bowers for the wild bird, 
And love for you and me. 
There are tears for the many 
And pleasures for the few; 
But let the world pass on, dear, 
There's love for me and you. 


4. "We do lie beneath the grass...”
Thomas Beddoes (1803-1849) 

We do lie beneath the grass 
In the moonlight, in the shade 
Of the yew-tree. 
They that pass Hear us not. 
We are afraid 
They would envy our delight, in our graves by glow-worm night. 
Come follow us, and smile as we; 
We sail to the rock in the ancient waves, 
Where the snow falls by thousands into the sea, 
And the drowned and the shipwrecked have happy graves.  

5. "My soul is awakened...” 
Anne Bronte (1820-1849)

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring 
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze, 
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring 
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas. 
The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing, 
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high, 
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing 
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky. 
I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing 
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray, 
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing, 
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today.