NEC Chamber Singers: Fairy Tales & Reveries

Giacomo Puccini (arr. John Rutter) | Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly

Darmon Meader | The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Text

On a hill above town stood a young shepherd lad
All alone with his flock, he let boredom run mad.
He devised an ill plan, filled with folly and madness.

The results of his ploy, it brought anger and sadness.
As daylight was fading, with darkness in tow,

He sounded the alarm to the masses below,
And thus the whole town, with dread and dismay

Was ravaged with panic when they heard him say…

     The boy cried: “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf,” the boy cried.
     The villagers screamed with eyes opened wide.
     “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf,” he decreed,
     but nary a lamb seemed to follow his lead.
     “Wait! Wait!,” was the villagers’ cry.
     “This boy is a farce, his story’s a lie.”
     When panic had withered they counted their sheep,
     Admonished the shepherd and went back to sleep.

As days became seasons, the memory waned,
and the shepherd returned to his fields, unrestrained.
He tried to refrain from his perilous scamming,
But try as he might, his tune was still damning.
As spring turned to summer, the sheep and the lamb
Were high on the hill when scheming began.
His foolhardy ways took a turn for the worse
When the villagers pondered his perilous verse.

     The boy cried: “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf,” the boy cried.
     The villagers screamed with eyes opened wide.
     “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf,” he decreed,
     but nary a lamb seemed to follow his lead.
     “Wait! Wait!,” was the villagers’ cry.
     “This boy is a farce, his story’s a lie.”
     When panic had withered they counted their sheep,
     Admonished the shepherd and went back to sleep.

As the shepherd returned to his flock one gray morn,
From the mist crept the beast that his tricks had forewarned,
He cried out in earnest: “The wolf has arrived!”
But the village lay sleeping, his pleas were denied.
For long they had tired of his dangerous game,
So his cries went unanswered, his conceit was to blame.
As the wolf made a meal of the lambs and the sheep,
The poor shepherd boy lay pleading, as the town was fast asleep

     while the boy cried: “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf,” the boy cried.
     The villagers laughed, no fears to abide.
     “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf,” he decreed,
     but nary a man seemed to follow his heed.
     “Wait! Wait! You’ve fooled us before,
     We know you’re a farce, your lies we ignore!”
     The shepherd had learned his lesson too late,
     That lying will lead to a terrible fate.

So what did we learn from this misguided youth?
If you want to be trusted, don’t mess with the truth!

- Darmon Meaderbased on an Aesop’s Fable

Latvian Folksong set by Laura Jēkabsone | unaM udēB

Laura Jēkabsone asks the chorus to sing this traditional Latvian text backwards.

Text

Yunnan Folksong (arr. Ma Shuilong) | Xiao He Tang Shui (Flowing Creek)

Xiao He Tang Shui, from Yunnan province in southwestern China, has become one of China’s more popular tunes. Yunnan is famous for its terraced rice paddies that extend down massive slopes, and against this backdrop Xiao He Tang Shui adopts the style of a mountain song, meant to express deep emotion.  Its pentatonic melody actually assumes the contour of the mountain scenery with its many leaps, yet is also flows with stepwise motion.  Most characteristic is its long-sustained high notes, frequent embellishments and relaxed, flexible rhythm.  The love song text expresses profound feelings of a young girl – traditionally referred to as ‘little sister’ in China – for her ‘big brother’ (male loved one) who is herding in the mountains.  The serene text is full of scenic references, including the shining moon, flowing creek and cool breeze.  The love entreaty is sung as if calling across the mountaintops: both verses have five text lines, with an ‘echo’ effect occurring in the first, third, and fourth lines.

Text

Ah! The moon comes out bright and clear,
I yearn for my love deep in the mountains,
My love is like the moon, walking in heaven, ah! my love!
The clear creek flows calmly at the foot of the mountain.

Ah! The moon glistens halfway up the slope,
seeing it reminds me of my beloved,
A cool breeze blows up the slope, ah! my love!
May you hear me calling to you, my love.  Alas, my love!

John Rutter | Sing a Song of Sixpence from Five Childhood Lyrics

Text

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish
To set before the king?

The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
There came a little blackbird
And snapp’d off her nose.

Traditional

Jaakko Mäntyjärvi | El Hambo

From the composer:

El Hambo is the second installment in a rather loosely defined series that I have decided to call Justly Forgotten Peoples.  (The first installment was, of course, Pseudo-Yoik.)  The hambo is a Swedish folk dance in 3/4 time.  This augmented hambo in 5/4 time is something of a tribute to those folk musicians whose enthusiasm much exceeds their sense of rhythm, and the increasingly desperate punctuations should be interpreted as an attempt to keep the performance in some sort of metrical shape.  The somewhat arrogant title is intended to suggest (rather like la Valse) an apotheosis of the genre, The Mother of All Hambos if you like, or perhaps even The Hambo to End All Hambos.  It also embraces the pan-European ideal; for those who find themselves distressed by the fact that the piece does not in fact contain anything remotely identifiable as Spanish, it may be of some interest to note that elhambo means ‘electric hambo’ in Swedish and could also be an alternate transliteration of the Welsh y llam bodd (‘the jump of joy’).  Further cognates are welcome.
        Sources of inspiration for this piece include, surprisingly, genuine Norwegian choral folk song arrangements and of course the Swedish Chef in The Muppets Show.  The text is, or is supposed to be, completely meaningless, as those who are familiar with Pseudo-Yoik will already have suspected.  The first three chords of the piece are violin tunings actually used in Norwegian folk music.       
– Jaakko Mäntyjärvi