Sing for the morning's joy, Cecilia, sing (Charles H. Giffen)
Music files
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- (Posted 2018-09-20) CPDL #51336:
- Editor: Charles H. Giffen (submitted 2018-09-20). Score information: Letter, 2 pages, 88 kB Copyright: CC BY NC SA
- Edition notes: MusicXML source file(s) in compressed .mxl format.
General Information
Title: Sing for the morning's joy, Cecilia, sing
Composer: Charles H. Giffen
Lyricist: Ursula Vaughan Williams (1911-2007)
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Sacred, Hymn Meter: 10 10. 10 10. D
Language: English
Instruments: Organ
First published: 2018
Description: This hymn, in honor of St. Cecilia is set to the tune GLOUCESTER CRESCENT which was composed for the text, 'A Hymn for St Cecilia' (1961) by Ursula Vaughan Williams, the widow of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
'A Hymn for St Cecilia'
Sing for the morning’s joy, Cecilia, sing,
in words of youth and phrases of the spring.
Walk the bright colonnades by fountains spray
and sing as sunlight fills the waking day.
Till angels, voyaging in upper air,
pause on a wing, and gather the clear sound
into celestial joy, wound and unwound,
a silver chain or golden as your hair.
Sing for your loves of heaven and of earth,
in words of music, and each word a truth,
marriage of heart and longings that aspire,
a bond of roses and a ring of fire.
Your summertime grows short and fades away,
terror must gather to a martyr’s death,
but never tremble, the last indrawn breath
remembers music as an echo may.
Through the cold aftermath of centuries
Cecilia’s music dances in the skies,
lend us a fragment of the immortal air
where with your choiring angels we may share.
A light to light us through time-fettered night,
water of life, a rose of paradise;
so from the earth another song shall rise
to meet your own in heavens long delight.
by Ursula Vaughan Williams, used by permission