DC4068
The virgin's cradle hymn
Music: Douglas Cook, Words: Anon
Voicing: SAA
Performance time approx: 1m 15s
Range S and solo: e♭' – g'' / A1: c' – g' / A2: b♭ – f'
Price code: A
Complexity:
This piece is part of the set "A sequence of carols (SAA)".
The set also includes:
This forgotten lullaby to the Christ child was brought to a wider audience by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who found it in an old print in a German village inn in 1799. Douglas Cook’s exquisite setting swells and dies in two-bar phrases, also rocking gently between major and minor tonalities.
Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet
Quae tam dulcem somnum videt.
Dormi Jesu blandule.
Si non dormis mater plorat
Inter fila cantans orat.
Blande, veni, somnule.
from a Dutch print published by Hieronmymus Wierix (1553-1619) in Jesu Christi Dei Domini Salvatoris nostra Infantia
Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling:
Mother sits beside thee smiling;
Sleep, my darling, tenderly!
If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
Singing as her wheel she turneth:
Come, soft slumber, balmily!
English rendering by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sleep, Jesus! Mother smiles
who sees such sweet sleep.
Sleep Jesus, gentle one.
If you do not sleep, your mother weeps,
prays, singing, among her threads.
Come, sweet sleep.
literal translation by Canasg editors