Everyone Sang by Roderick Williams
Premièred by The King’s Singers, The Chapter House Choir and the Chapter House Youth Choir in York Minster 5 November 2016
Roderick Williams writes:
This piece was commissioned by Stephen Williams, director of the Chapter House Choir. Stephen asked for three interlocking pieces which would, to a degree, be independent of each other while also working together. He also suggested the Siegfried Sassoon poem Everyone sang, acknowledging that the concert date is near to Remembrance Sunday and that it would be proper to commemorate the continuing anniversary of the First World War. To this end I have used the famous phrases from the Laurence Binyon poem For the Fallen which could be sung as almost a plainsong mantra by the Youth Choir. The words from the Latin Mass which petition for peace (dona nobis pacem) seemed like the obvious text for the Chapter House Choir.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
LAURENCE BINYON
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
FROM THE LITURGY
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the while
Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.
Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Difted away… O, by Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
