for upper voices (SSSAA) a cappella
Text: Scots (Robert Burns)
Duration: c7 minutes
Difficulty: 3/5

In its original scoring for mixed voices MacMillan's The Gallant Weaver has become a favourite; this arrangement now extends the setting to upper voices. Paul Spicer comments, 'This ideal introduction to MacMillan’s secular choral music is rich in Scottish flavour, appropriate to its Robert Burns text. Characteristic vocal elements are the ornamental inflections drawn from Scottish folk music and Gaelic psalmody, and the overall mood is one of tranquillity.' The poem celebrates love and the joys of nature: '... While birds rejoice in leafy bowers; While bees delight in op’ning flowers; While corn grows green in simmer showers, I love my gallant Weaver.'

Text
Where Cart rins rowin to the sea,
By mony a flow’r and spreading tree,
There lives a lad, the lad for me,
He is a gallant Weaver.

Oh I had wooers aught or nine,
They gied me rings and ribbons fine,
And I was feared my heart would tine,
And I gied it to the Weaver.

My daddie sign’d my tocher-band,
To gie the lad that has the land,
But to my heart I’ll add my hand,
And give it to the Weaver.

While birds rejoice in leafy bowers;
While bees delight in op’ning flowers;
While corn grows green in simmer showers,
I love my gallant Weaver

Robert Burns (1759–1796)

James MacMillan
Born in Scotland in 1959, James MacMillan studied at Edinburgh and Durham Universities and now lives in Largs. His early successes as a composer in the 1990s included The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, premiered at the BBC Proms, and the percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel written for Evelyn Glennie. MacMillan has a special interest in choral composition, ranging from simple liturgical settings for use in church services, to major works for choir and orchestra including Seven Last Words from the Cross, Quickening and St John Passion. His music has been championed and recorded by leading choirs and vocal groups including Cappella Nova, Polyphony, The Hilliard Ensemble, The Sixteen, Westminster Cathedral Choir and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. With their Gaelic inflections and characteristic mixing of ancient and modern, his works have also proved popular with amateur chamber choirs around the world.