for mixed voices (SATB div) & piano
Text: English (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Duration: 5 minutes
Difficulty: 2/5

A welcome addition to this composer’s output of secular choral works, Oh Sleep! is a beautiful and lyrical setting which will be appreciated by choirs both amateur and professional. It was composed to mark the 90th birthday of Ayrshire Voices’ conductor, Raymond Bramwell. Coleridge’s timeless poetry is sensitively and touchingly evoked in MacMillan’s setting. The piano accompaniment serves by turns to set the mood, to underpin the voices and to complement them with a variety of textures.

Text
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Belovèd from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven
That slid into my soul.


O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gush’d from my heart,
And I bless’d them unaware.

Around, around flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun;
Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mix’d, now one by one.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

James MacMillan
Born in Scotland in 1959, James MacMillan studied at Edinburgh and Durham Universities and now lives in Largs. His early successes as a composer in the 1990s includedThe Confession of Isobel Gowdie, premiered at the BBC Proms, and the percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel written for Evelyn Glennie. MacMillan has a special interest in choral composition, ranging from simple liturgical settings for use in church services, to major works for choir and orchestra including Seven Last Words from the Cross, Quickening and St John Passion. His music has been championed and recorded by leading choirs and vocal groups including Cappella Nova, Polyphony, The Hilliard Ensemble, The Sixteen, Westminster Cathedral Choir and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. With their Gaelic inflections and characteristic mixing of ancient and modern, his works have also proved popular with amateur chamber choirs around the world.