Description

Voicing: SSA choir and piano

Level: 3

Duration: 6 minutes

To see perusal score, please contact Jocelyn.

Performed by Bella Voce Singers

Hagen’s clever settings work perfectly as a pair. “My Bed is a Boat” is a playful, rhythmic, a cappella romp with a catchy tune and beautiful lyrical passages. “All the pretty horses” adds contrast with arching melodies and a sparse, atmospheric piano part.

Text

I. My Bed is a Boat
My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor’s coat
And starts me in the dark.

At night I go on board and say
Good-night to all my friends on shore;
I shut my eyes and sail away
And see and hear no more.

And sometimes things to bed I take,
As prudent sailors have to do;
Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
Perhaps a toy or two.

All night across the dark we steer;
But when the day returns at last,
Safe in my room beside the pier,
I find my vessel fast.

– Robert Louis Stevenson

II. All the pretty little horses
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you’ll have cake,
And all the pretty little horses.

Black and bay, dapple and grey,
Coach and six little horses,
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
Way down yonder, down in the meadow,
There’s a poor wee little lamby.
The bees and the butterflies
pickin’ at its eyes,
The poor wee thing cried for her mammy.

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,
Go to sleepy little baby.
When you wake, you’ll have cake,
And all the pretty little horses.

– Traditional