Serenade to Music - Ralph Vaugham Williams

Vaughan Williams écrivit cette sérénade en hommage à H. Wood, fondateur des "concerts promenades" dur Royal Albert Hall. Il choisit le texte tiré du Marchand de Venise de Shakespeare. Il imagina un arrangement offrant à chacun des seize chanteurs un solo fait sur mesure pour chaque voix. Plus tard, craignant que la pièce ne fût plus jamais jouée, Vaughan Williams permit son interprétation par un choeur à quatre voix et réalisa une version destinée à l'orchestre seul.

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Serenade to Music
William Shakespeare

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn:
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
The reason is, your spirits are attentive:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted... Music! hark!
It is your music of the house.
Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
Silence bestows that virtue on it.
How many things by season season'd are.
To their right praise and true perfection!
Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion,
And would not be awak'd.
(Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.)

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