A setting for unaccompanied SATB (with divisions) of a text from the 16th century. This poem appears in

The Masque of the Twelve Months, by George Chapman (1559?-1634).

​Commissioned by Cappella Nova, with subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council, 1994.

 Shine out, fair Sun, with all your heat,

   Show all your thousand-coloured light!

 Black Winter freezes to his seat;

   The grey wolf howls, he does so bite;

 Crookt Age on three knees creeps the street;

   The boneless fish close quaking lies

 And eats for cold his aching feet;

   The stars in icicles arise:

 Shine out, and make this winter night

 Our beauty's Spring, our Prince of Light!

by George Chapman (1559?-1634), from "The Masque of the Twelve Months".

Notes on performance:

The ‘aah’ sound is to be sung as the ‘a’ in ‘car.

The ‘er’ sound as in ‘winter’. Similarly, the ‘ee’ sound is taken from the vowel sound of the words preceding it. All of these sounds should be produced with very little or no ictus.

In the passage beginning at bar 20, the ‘aah’ sound is to be reached by gradually opening the mouth so that the tail end of the ‘aah’ sound is clear and distinguishable from the softer ‘mmm’ sound, or the colder ‘er’ sound in bar 23. The arrows indicate these gradual changes in tone quality.

Singers should use the minimum amount of vibrato throughout.