Music Text
Robert Burns, from 'Death and Dr Hornbook' (Scots)
Abbreviations (PDF)
Publisher
Boosey & Hawkes
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes
for the world.
Availability
Repertoire Note
Choral level of difficulty: 1 (5 greatest)
This was written for Peter Maxwell Davies’s 80th birthday and is a simple unison voices melody accompanied by handbells. It sets a verse by Robert Burns from Death and Dr Hornbrook which mentions Cumnock hills where MacMillan grew up and where he now runs an annual arts festival – the Cumnock Tryst. It is a very simple setting and powerfully melodic in that way which the best folk-song has of ingraining itself into our minds. MacMillan, time and again, shows how contemporary music can be intensely lyrical and yet be absolutely of its time and place.
Repertoire Note by Paul Spicer