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About the Composer

Carol Barnett

Carol Barnett writes audacious and engaging music. She is known for breaking the mold with meter changes, differing tonal centers, unusual instrument combinations, and her love of fast tempi. Despite these typical thumbprints, Barnett’s works are diverse, uncovering the needs of each piece and each text with her characteristic integrity. Carol’s varied catalog includes works...

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Carol Barnett (Beady Eyes)

Dance and Sing

Name: Dance and Sing
SKU: BE-002
Availability: InStock

Carol Barnett

Singers and piano skip through phrases like children through youth.

Choral

mixed choir

piano

Difficulty: 3

Duration: 3-5 min.

BE-002

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SATB, piano

True to its name, this modern madrigal focuses on lively, compelling rhythms that imitate and
celebrate the energy of youth, while gently underscoring its ephemeral nature. Fitting for a college choir looking to expand their expressive range, “Dance and Sing’s” spirit comes through whether sung with proper precision or with a severe case of spring fever.

Composer’s Notes

Commissioned in honor of the Macalester Festival Chorale’s twentieth anniversary, “Dance and Sing” is a lively, rhythmically compelling song set to a text by John Gay.

– Carol Barnett

Text

Youth’s the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty;
She alone who that employs,
Well deserves her beauty.
Let’s be gay,
While we may,
Beauty’s a flower despised in decay.
Youth’s the season made for joys,
Love is then our duty.

Let us drink and sport today,
Ours is not tomorrow.
Love with youth flies swift away,
Age is nought but sorrow.
Dance and sing,
Time’s on the wing,
Life never know the return of spring.
Let us drink and sport today,
Ours is not tomorrow.

– John Gay

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