Title: Music: The Gift To Sing – A Song Cycle for Soprano and PianoComposer: Mona RejinoSeries: Mona RejinoPublisher: Mona Rejino MusicFormat: Digital Download. Click here to purchase.Click here to hear a performance

Music: The Gift to Sing (a song cycle) is a set of four art songs based on poems by Thomas Moore, Henry van Dyke, James Weldon Johnson, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Each poem depicts a theme that reflects the human condition such as sorrow, hope, despair, youth and happiness, death and legacy. In writing these pieces, my goal was to communicate each poem’s meaning with a musical setting that shows how integral music is as we navigate our common life experiences. 

Sing, Sweet Harp was written by the 19^th century Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, Thomas Moore, and it comes from his collection of songs titled “Irish Melodies.” The text evokes the sadness and despair artists feel when they are no longer valued and how, after their deaths, they are forgotten and nameless. The bleakness and hopelessness of this poignant poem linger long after the words subside. 

To a Young Girl Singing was written in 1911 by Henry van Dyke, an American author, educator, and clergyman. This delightful poem tells the story of a young girl who is praised for her singing ability, although she doesn’t really understand what she’s singing about at all. But once she has lived for a while and has had a chance to mature and develop deeper feelings, she will be able to sing from her heart, and that will make all the difference.

The Gift to Sing was written by the poet James Weldon Johnson, an American writer and civil rights activist who also wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing. The Gift to Sing was published in 1917 as part of the collection titled “Fifty Years and Other Poems.” This poem expresses the profound effect music has on our lives. The poet sings to turn his gloomy day into a cheerful one; to turn his somber moments into ones of gladness. He doesn’t dwell on the past or worry about the future. Singing helps him overcome all the darkness and miseries that come his way. 

Music, When Soft Voices Die, text by Percy Bysshe Shelley, was written in 1821 and published in 1824, two years after his sudden and tragic death at age twenty-nine. Ironically, the poem compares the death of a human to the dying of music. Shelley evokes the feeling that the sound does not merely disappear, and like our loved ones when they die, it does not simply cease to be, but rather continues on in our memory. The poem closes with the notion of eternity of both man and art. It communicates how music lives on through all our life experiences, and how music enriches us all.

This work was jointly commissioned by Texas Music Teachers Association and Music Teachers National Association in 2021 and was premiered on June 20, 2021.

Performances by Ilana Lemke, Soprano and Mona Rejino, Pianist.