SP1028
The winter it is past
Music: Sheena Phillips, Words: Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Voicing: SATB with sop. solo
Performance time approx: 2m 30s
Range S: f' – f'' / A: a – d'' / T: d – f' / B: F – c'
Price code: B
Complexity:
This song is based on Robert Burns’ version of an old ballad entitled ‘The lovesick maid’. The maid in question compares the fickleness of a man’s love, which “wanders up and down”, with her own which is “forever constant and true”.
In this lovely through-composed arrangement, a solo soprano sings the opening verse, allowing the beautiful traditional tune to set the scene. Passages in the relative minor add a note of sadness, and the male voices do indeed wander up and down, in this woeful but charming meditation on love.
The winter it is past, and the summer's come at last,
And the small birds sing on ev'ry tree;
The hearts of these are glad, but mine is very sad,
For my lover has parted from me.
The rose upon the brier, by the waters running clear,
May have charms for the linnet or the bee;
Their little loves are blest and their little hearts at rest,
But my lover is parted from me.
My love is like the sun, in the firmament does run,
Forever is constant and true;
But his is like the moon that wanders up and down,
And every month it is new.
All you that are in love and cannot it remove,
I pity the pains you endure:
For experience makes me know that your hearts are full of woe,
A woe that no mortal can cure.
Robert Burns