I Am the Mountainy Singer
(SSA, piano) 4'00"
Lyrical setting of an Irish text celebrating life, with its joys and sorrows.
Choral Score: $1.75 Add to Cart
Composer's Notes:
This was a commission from the St. Croix Valley Boy Choir based in Hudson, Wisconsin, in honor of their 20th anniversary season. The text (below) is by Irish poet Joseph Campbell. Suitable for youth choir through college treble ensembles.
I am the mountainy singer--
The voice of the peasant's dream,
The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,
The leap of the fish in the stream.
Quiet and love I sing--
The carn on the mountain crest,
The cailin in her lover's arms,
The child at its mother's breast.
Beauty and peace I sing--
The fire on the open hearth,
The cailleach spinning at her wheel,
The plough in the broken earth.
Travail and pain I sing--
The bride on the childing bed,
The dark man laboring at his rhymes,
The ewe in the lambing shed.
Sorrow and death I sing--
The canker come on the corn,
The fisher lost in the mountain loch,
The cry at the mouth of the morn.
No other life I sing,
For I am sprung of the stock
That broke the hilly land for bread,
And built the nest in the rock!
--Joseph Campbell