The Fair Youth (2015)

for SSATB choir, a cappella

The Fair Youth
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Text: William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Duration: 3 minutes
Difficulty: 3/4

Runner-Up in the Shakespeare Choral Composition Competition by The Fourth Choir.

First performed by The Fourth Choir (Dominic Peckham, dir.) in London, UK in April 2016, and in Antwerp, Belgium (as part of the Antwerp Queer Arts Festival) in August 2016.

The Fair Youth was written in response to a competition from The Fourth Choir, a London-based queer chamber choir (of which I later became Composer in Residence). The competition was to set one of Shakespeare's sonnets addressed to a young male lover. In The Fair Youth, I used the text of Sonnet 104 ("To me, fair friend, you never can be old...") to create a fervent and ecstatic anthem which teems with youthful energy through interweaving strands of vocal fabric and pompous fanfare. However, at the same time, a metronomic pulse permeates the entire work, emphasizing the constant and irrevocable passage of time.

Click here to see the complete score.

The audio below is from the first performance by The Fourth Choir in April 2016.

Full Text


To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,

Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.

Ah, yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived:

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred:
Ere you were born was beauty’s summer dead.