The Colour of His Hair
for Mixed choir, unaccompanied
This work received second place in the 2015 Ithaca College Choral Composition Competition. It sets a poem by A. E. Housman which was not published until after his death. In 1895 Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for two years for being a practicing homosexual, a crime in England at that time. Housman’s poem, while seemingly tongue-in-cheek, was written in protest of Wilde’s incarceration and a British court system so arbitary in its justice that a man could conceivably be imprisoned because of “the colour of his hair.”
SKU: RBT-006
Categories: Choral Music, Mixed Voices
| Instrumentation: | A Cappella |
| Difficulty: | Advanced Student, Advanced |
| Descriptive Tags: | Humorous |
| Language: | English |
| Sacred or Secular: | Secular |
| Voicing: | SATB, SATBB |
| Duration: | 1-5 Minutes |
$2.00
This title is available in print or for immediate download. For both options, there is a minimum required quantity of 8 copies for choral titles. Please support self-publishing composers by ordering the quantity according to the number of singers in the ensemble that will perform the work.
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Title | View | Voicing | Duration | Language | Composer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This very simple Christmas song is aimed at younger children. It is in unison throughout, apart from a brief optional descant part near the end. Accompaniment is for piano, and a few simple percussion instruments may be added if desired. This is the original version (GTT-025a), which refers directly to Christ’s Nativity, and is suitable […] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SATB | – | English | This haunting melody, is one of the most beautiful songs that the slaves composed; bone-weary and sorrow-filled… with their eyes firmly fixed on a Great Deliverer somewhere up in heaven. The itinerant preachers that visited the plantations, selected specific passages from the Bible- guaranteeing them entrance to the Promised Land- if they worked hard for […] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This haunting melody, is one of the most beautiful songs that the slaves composed; bone-weary and sorrow-filled… with their eyes firmly fixed on a Great Deliverer somewhere up in heaven. The itinerant preachers that visited the plantations, selected specific passages from the Bible- guaranteeing them entrance to the Promised Land- if they worked hard for […] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SATB | 3'20" | English | Musick to Heare, a madrigal on Sonnet VIII of William Shakespeare, was composed in 2006. It is written for a cappella SATB chorus, and although it has infrequent divisi a due in each of the parts, the use of smaller vocal forces (8 or 16 performers), with lighter Renaissance-style singing is preferred. Difficulty level: Difficult. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Musick to Heare, a madrigal on Sonnet VIII of William Shakespeare, was composed in 2006. It is written for a cappella SATB chorus, and although it has infrequent divisi a due in each of the parts, the use of smaller vocal forces (8 or 16 performers), with lighter Renaissance-style singing is preferred. Difficulty level: Difficult. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| SSA | 2'30" | English | Steven Paxton’s RAINDROP SONG is a setting of a whimsical poem by Texas poet Chris Willerton, about a talking raindrop. This short, delightful work for treble choir requires a good pianist, and includes short spoken segments for individual speaker as well as full choir. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Steven Paxton’s RAINDROP SONG is a setting of a whimsical poem by Texas poet Chris Willerton, about a talking raindrop. This short, delightful work for treble choir requires a good pianist, and includes short spoken segments for individual speaker as well as full choir. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Composer’s Note: “The Red Wheelbarrow,” an innovative environmental/imagist poem I first read as a teenager, struck me as an alluring and joyful means to immerse in a commission by Austin’s Inversion Ensemble for their Planet Home project. The score blossomed during a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a pastoral setting that […] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SSA | 6'30" | English | To Blossoms To Daffodils Gather ye Rosebuds All three of these poems are by the Seventeenth Century English lyric poet, Robert Herrick (1591-1674). While flowers are referred to in each of them, their main common theme is time – in particular the briefness of our lives here on this earth, and the need to use […] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To Blossoms To Daffodils Gather ye Rosebuds All three of these poems are by the Seventeenth Century English lyric poet, Robert Herrick (1591-1674). While flowers are referred to in each of them, their main common theme is time – in particular the briefness of our lives here on this earth, and the need to use […] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SATB | 3' | English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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