• Duration: 3 minutes
  • Soloist(s): Soprano
  • Instrumentation: String quartet, Harp / Piano
  • Published by: Novello & Co

 

The fourth piece from the collection The Call written in Autumn 1997 in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana and uses poems which seemed to echo the public’s need for answers to eternal questions.  This piece for soprano and piano is a setting of the W. H. Auden poem.

Let a florid music praise,
The flute and the trumpet,
Beauty’s conquest of your face:
In that land of flesh and bone,
Where from citadels on high
Her imperial standards fly,
Let the hot sun
Shine on, shine on.

O but the unloved have had power,
The weeping and striking,
Always: time will bring their hour;
Their secretive children walk
Through your vigilance of breath
To unpardonable Death,
And my vows break
Before his look.

Words: W. H. Auden (1907-1973)