Small Ensemble Piano,Vocal,Voice - Level 5 - Digital Download
SKU: A0.978194
Composed by Jason A. Heald. Contemporary. Score. 16 pages. Call of the Wild Publishing #6265333. Published by Call of the Wild Publishing (A0.978194).
THREE LABE SONNETS for mezzo-soprano and piano is a collection of settings by Louise Labé, (1520-1566), a female French Renaissance poet. Labé was fluent in Latin and Italian, and a trained musician. She wrote twenty-four sonnets.
TRANSLATION
Sonnet VIII - I Live, I Die I live, I die, I burn with fire, I drown. It matters very little what I feel; All life is now too real, now too surreal; Joy comes and endless boredom weighs me down, And suddenly I laugh and then I cry; With grief and bliss I’m weeping for the past; Good feelings go away and yet they last, And suddenly I bleed and then I sigh. That’s how it goes. Strange, ever changing love Has worn me out. I wish I were removed From such a star-crossed fate! I need a truce With Lady Luck. Again and yet again, Her wheel is spinning madly to produce This wanton, wild, intense, exquisite pain.
Sonnet XVIII - O Kiss Me O kiss me, kiss me, re-kiss me, and kiss! Be reckless, impudent, hot-headed, bold! O woo me! Pursue me! Kiss me like this: And I’ll give back fifty as hot as red coals. There, is it hurting? Come, let’s soothe the pain. I’ll give you sixty others just like these. And so we’ll kiss again and then again, While we enjoy each other at our ease. I know there’s fire within your unshaped clay, And so, allow me, love, to share my happiness: O let’s make burning passion rule today. I’m fond of doing what I love to do, Yet cannot feel supreme delight unless I have my other wild encounters, too.
Sonnet XIV - As Long As Tears As long as tears can well up in my eyes I’m saddened that our nights are marked by pain. And now my voice expresses once again A plaintive melody I’ve improvised. As long as I can pluck the lute, I try To sing about your charms in my refrain. As long as I can think, my fevered brain Is burning with an ardent zeal. I cry And cry a hundred thousand times for you. But when I feel my whirling thoughts grow still, And when both hand and voice won’t work their will, Because your treachery is piercing through My heart, I’ll know there’s just one final way. I’ll ask for Death to darken that bleak day.
