Thy Speech is as silence for alto voice, harpsichord and cello Small Ensemble - Digital Sheet Music

The text on which "Thy Speech Is as Silence" is based was written by the composer for a friend in the late 1980sand published in the "Loves Ancient and Forbidden" section of Selected Poems in 1990. The music, composed in October 2007 for alto (or countertenor) voice with continuo (harpsichord and cello), echoes the historicist style of the poem and recalls English and continental songs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.One of two vividly contrasting historicist art songs for solo voicebased on an original Shakespearean Sonnet and poem by the composer.The pdf contains score and partsThe sound sample is an electronic preview using cor anglais for the vocal partThe words areThy speech is as silence, as silence thy speech, For what my ear heareth Doth naught my heart teach But what my heart feareth My ear hath o'er heard. Since thou canst not unsay What thou hast ne'er said, Then mute let my heart be And earless my head, And blind let these holes be Which read so like words.