No Longer Mourn

No Longer Mourn is a piece based on and set to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71. The piece follows the form of sonnet in four sections, each more dramatic than the last. The music emphasizes on words like dead, woe, and decay to show that while the characters in the text love each other, the dying speaker does not want their partner’s mind to fill with woeful thoughts after their passing, so that it may fill with love in memory and the ability to move on. The music weaves between the beauty of love, and the pain of losing it. In the end, a peaceful yet painful resolution is reached.

Below is the text of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Then you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled 
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:

Nay, if you read this line, remember not 
The hand that writ it; for I love you so
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
If thinking on me then should make you woe. 

O, if, I say, you look upon this verse
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.
But let your love even with my life decay,

 Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.

Scored for SATB Choir
Performance and Score information available via the CONTACT page.