YV6006
Ballad
Ballad is about the sadness felt in leaving the earth behind to travel through space. It expresses the pull between home and away, as well as between progress, or exploration of the new, and the past.
SATB & piano performance time approx 1m 45s
See a perusal copy (PDF format) of the
music.
This copy is not licensed for rehearsal, performance or recording.
Hear a
MIDI rendering of
Ballad
This piece is the last in the set
a space trilogy
The first piece is
Andromeda
If you don't want to buy the whole set, then you can buy
Ballad individually using the link on this page.
This piece is a ballad about the sadness felt in leaving the earth behind to travel through space. The poem, I think, beautifully expresses the pull between home and away, as well as between progress, or exploration of the new, and the past. The piano part should sound pensive and delicate, rather as harp or guitar might in accompanying a solo ballad singer.
The other two pieces in the trilogy are Andromeda and Moonscape, also published by Canasg.
Words
Ballad Why are you weeping, child of the future,
For what are you grieving, son of the earth?
Acorns of autumn and white woods of winter,
Song-thrush of spring in the land of my birth.
You have a new life, child of the future,
Drifting through stars to a land of your own.
With Sirius to guide you, Orion beside you
Wandering the heavens you are free from the earth.
I have a new life, the speckled skies' beauty,
Left far behind me the dark cries of earth;
Oh, but I long for the soft rains of April,
Ice-ferned Decembers and suns of the south.
What was I dreaming, to drift with Orion,
To leave for cold Neptune my home and my hearth?
Stars in their millions stretch endless, remind me
Far far behind lies my blue-marbled earth.
Here on the hillside the dawn is just rising,
Buttercups dew-fill, all silken and gold.
Well may you weep, sad child of the future,
Well may you weep for your beautiful world.
Poem © Judith Nicholls 1985, from MAGIC MIRROR by Judith Nicholls, published by Faber & Faber. Used by permission of the author.
Purchase – 6006: Ballad
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