Product Description
The text on which "Thy Speech Is as Silence" is based was written by the composer for a friend in the late 1980s
and 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 voice
based on an original Shakespearean Sonnet and poem by the composer.
The pdf contains score and parts
The sound sample is an electronic preview using cor anglais for the vocal part
The words are
Thy 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.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.