how can I keep from singing

J.S. Bach: Come, Sweet Death (Arr. for 5 Cellos)

J.S. Bach: Come, Sweet Death, BWV 478 (Arr. for 5 Cellos)

"The Stars Stand Up in the Air", Eric William Barnum
Robert Bode, conductor
Lee D. Thompson, piano
Composed to a rare poem by Irishman Thomas MacDonagh, it describes the torture of lost love.  Such was the power of this love, that the poet cannot help proclaiming she was more beautiful than music itself, and now that she is gone, he wishes all music were mute.  Yet throughout the poem, he cannot help avowing her beauty with wild statements, culminating in 'She's more fair than the stars where they stand —'  Such a love, when it disappears, can leave a hole in the heart so large, perhaps the only response one can give as MacDonagh does in a final remark: 'Tis my grief that her ever I knew!'  The music is highly romantic with flowing melodies and dramatic phrasing, narrating the past joy and present pain of the jilted lover.


The Stars Stand Up in the Air
Thomas MacDonagh (1878-1916)

The stars stand up in the air
The sun and the moon are gone,
The strand of its waters is bare.
And her sway is swept from the swan.

The cuckoo was calling all day,
Hid in the branches above,
How my stóirín is fled away,
'Tis my grief that I gave her my love.

Three things through love I see —
Sorrow and sin and death —
And my mind reminding me
That this doom I breathe with my breath.

But sweeter than violin or lute
Is my love — and she left me behind.
I wish that all music were mute,
And I to all beauty were blind.

She's more shapely than swan by the strand,
She's more radiant than grass after dew,
She's more fair than the stars where they stand —
'Tis my grief that her ever I knew!



"The Stars Stand Up", Eric William Barnum

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