Sponsor: Marcus
Sop: Wendy, Max, Juliana
Alto: Sandy, Louli
Tenor: Marcus, Phil, Robin
Bass: Peter, Colin
For the Women only verse: (Oh long may ladies sit and weep)
Sop: Max, Wendy
Alt: Juliana, Sandy
Ten: Louli
For the Men only verse: (Last night I saw the new moon rise)
As above, except Marcus on Alto
Errata: Verse 3, Line 4 on lyrics page, it should be ‘To fear a sullen sky” (not sea). Third verse, Bar 14 on the music.
Patrick Spens – last two verses
Patrick Spens arr Pratt pdf Please use this pdf for info on where the voices separate in verses 3 and 4.
Last Two Verses – MP3s
Patrick Spens – last two verses
Patrick Spens – all (inc all verses)
For those interested in such things, some background on the text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Patrick_Spens
Some words on the song from the arranger, Graham Pratt:
Tune is in the tenor part (as in the original from c. 1550)
Thomas Tallis is responsible for the music; I may have made the odd change to accommodate the group I was in.
(I did re-arrange it with the melody in the Soprano part and set Hardy’s poem The Darkling Thrush to it – it works quite well.)
The music is approximate; the syllables/notes have to be elastic to reflect the mood and cadence of the lyrics. So…there’s no attempt at real accuracy – just a rough guide to notes sung. You’ll have to ‘make it your own’.
The ballad (lyrics) itself, as you probably know with ballads, has many variants (of various lengths). I can’t remember my source – but just looking in my Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Bronson), there are 12 versions there. There will be plenty of others without tunes I guess.
The one thing I can claim is marrying the ballad with this music – and, about a year after I’d done it, I saw Peter Weir’s film Master & Commander which, in one particularly harrowing scene of a man lost overboard, uses Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis to drive home the tragedy. Hearing someone else using this music for a maritime disaster seemed to vindicate my choice!
The arranger and friends, singing this arrangement: