Description

This is a song you definitely don’t want sung at your wedding! Inspired by James MacMillan’s beautiful 2-part setting of Sonnet 116, – written for the wedding of two of the composer’s friends – Stef created this ‘anti-love song’ in response: a dark, brooding setting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 137, originally programmed alongside the MacMillian Sonnet to counterbalance its romantic sentiments with a portrayal of love’s darker side. The piece exists in two arrangements: SA and TB, and is suitable for 2-part choir or 2 solo voices. Delivery of the relatively straightforward speech rhythms in this piece demands care for the meaning of the words; tuning of some of the piece’s close dissonances and unexpected harmonic shifts presents a meaty but satisfying vocal challenge.

‘subversive … “anti-love song” [in which] the darker timbre and murkier colours of the tenor/bass duet match the sourer sentiment of this text: cursing love as a “blind fool”‘ – York Press (read the full review)

The Crucial Info

Forces: SA or TB
Duration: c. 3’30”
Difficulty: medium
Occasions: any… just not weddings!
Texts: Sonnet 137 by William Shakespeare
Date of composition: 2016
Premiere: York Madrigal Singers, York Late Music Festival, 2016.
Other performances: Juice Vocal Ensemble, Timeline Songs ‘British Bard-Song’ project, Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge and St. Martin’s Church, Dorking, 2016.

Listen

Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
That they behold, and see not what they see?
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is take the worst to be.
If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks,
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,
Why of eyes’ falsehood hast thou forged hooks,
Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?
Why should my heart think that a several plot,
Which my heart knows the wide world’s common place?
Or mine eyes, seeing this, say this is not,
To put fair truth upon so foul a face?
In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,
And to this false plague are they now transferred.

Please contact Stef for more information and/or a license to perform this piece.