Move him into the sun (Jennifer Bastable)
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- (Posted 2023-10-31) CPDL #76839:
- Editor: Jennifer Bastable (submitted 2023-10-31). Score information: Letter, 13 pages, 451 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: Move him into the sun
Composer: Jennifer Bastable
Lyricist: Wilfred Owen
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: Solo SSAB + SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published:
Description: A capella setting of Wilfred Owen's poem Futility ('Move him into the sun') for bass soloist, trio of female soloists - the three Norns - and SATB choir.
Ideally the Norns should sing offstage at the beginning, and move to join the main choir from page 8, when their words quote lines from Thomas Gray's poem The Bard.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
Futility (Wilfred Owen)
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
Lines from The Bard (Thomas Gray)
The thread is spun;
The web is wove;
Our work is done