Product Description
This setting is ideal for Remembrance Day: it
is also suitable for a funeral or celebration of life. It is singable as a
congregation hymn, as an anthem for unison voices, or as a vocal solo (range A
below middle C to D a ninth above middle C).
The text is by Canadian poet Frederick George
Scott (1861-1944). The original title is "Requiescant" ("Let
them rest"). The source is "Christian Poetry in Canada" (ed David
A. Kent ed, Anglican Book Center and ECW Press, Toronto, Canada, 1993) page 54.
Scott was a military chaplain during World
War I. This poem was, in the poets own words, "[b]egun while I was lying awake
in a sleeping-bag under a tarpaulin at Brielen, near Ypres. during the gas
attack on April 22nd, 1915. As I lay awake, I wondered what all our comrades
who had "passed over" were doing now. I finished the poem at a little village
called Robec. As I wrote it, I could see through the window, my host, who was a
carpenter, making a babys coffin."
(http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/confederation/FGScott/collected_poems/notes.htm)
I have made a few slight changes:
"awful" has become
"awe-filled" "Dear Christ" became "O Christ", and the line
"A weary road these men have trod" has been altered to "A weary road
these warriors trod".
Both the music and the original text are in
the public domain in Canada, where copyright expires 50 years after the death
of the author or composer.
A brass quintet arrangement compatible with the voice part is available separately.
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.