VocalEssence Singers Of This Age, Members of VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, Mary Jo Gothmann -piano

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches *of sweet harmony.

*Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
*There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
*Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
*But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

*Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear,
And draw her home with music.

*I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
*The reason is, your spirits are attentive –
*The man that hath no music in himself,
*Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
*Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
*The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. *Music! hark!
It is your music of the house.

*Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.
*Silence bestows that virtue on it
*How many things by season season'd are
To their right praise and true perfection!

*Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion
And would not be awak'd. Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches *of sweet harmony.

-lyrics adapted from the discussion about music and the music of the spheres from Act V, Scene I from the play The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.

*solo