Three Songs from Twelfth Night

Winner for the 2020 CCDA/Heussenstamm Composition Competition

“O Mistress Mine” - “Come Away, Death” - “Hey, Ho, The Wind and the Rain”

SATB a cappella

Duration 4:30

Text by William Shakespeare

Notes

In 1997, Debbie Vigstrom, the drama teacher at Centennial High School in Bakersfield, produced Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I offered to write the music for the play, which I did. Not long after that, I took three of those tunes and put them together as a choral setting for SATB with divisi. They are “O Mistress Mine,” “Come Away, Death,” and “Hey, Ho, The Wind and The Rain.”

Text

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O, stay and hear! Your truelove’s coming,
That can sing both high and low.
Trip no further, pretty sweeting.
Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.
What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to man’s estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.