Lydia Kakabadse: Courage – for mezzo soprano or alto and piano (NXP129)
This is a sheet music edition of Courage by the composer Lydia Kakabadse.
Sheet music for mezzo soprano or alto and piano
Music: Lydia Kakabadse
Words: Amelia Earhart (1897–1937)
Score: 5 pages
Audio sample
Preface and programme notes
This piece opens with the voice singing the first line of Amelia Earhart’s poem without accompaniment. Famed for her courage, Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and author as well as the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
The poem makes the point that we have a choice of either living within our comfort zone or finding the courage to break free and challenge ourselves in uncharted waters, which has its own reward.
At times, where the piano ascends in its upper register, there is a sense that it is representative of a free spirit soaring in the air.
Lydia Kakabadse
Words
Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not
Knows no release from little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.
How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare the soul's dominion?
Each time we make a choice,
We pay with courage to behold the restless day,
And count it fair.
