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The Stolen Child
Browse CatalogSATB & six solo voices or chamber choir
Note from Composer
The Stolen Child was a joint commission by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain and The King’s Singers to celebrate their 25th and 40th anniversaries, respectively. They asked me to write a piece that they could perform together, and I thought Yeats’ exquisite poem (written when he was only twenty) would create a perfect dramatic counterpoint between the two groups. The National Youth Choir would represent the voice of the ‘human child’, innocent and naive; and The King’s Singers would represent the highland faeries of the ‘water and the wild’, seducing the children away from a world full of troubles with the promise of endless revelry and eternal youth.
There are two ways to perform The Stolen Child. The first way, exactly as written, with a male sextet: two counter-tenors, one tenor, two baritones, and one bass. The second is to use a small chamber choir in place of the sextet, and have soloists from this small group perform solo only as indicated in the score; all other lines should be tutti within the chamber choir.
The Stolen Child is lovingly dedicated to my teacher and mentor John Corigliano, on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
The Text
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scare could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.
William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939
Duration
9 minutes
Year of Composition
2008
Licensing
Purchase
US: Hal Leonard
UK: Musicroom
World: Music Shop Europe
Digital: SheetMusicDirect
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