The first time I heard this song was last year when the choir went to Roma. The director played the CD track that “The King Singers” album. They are so great, I was impressed by this song. And it went quit well in the concert in Roma. The audiences liked it very much.
Here’s the lyric:
Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone
Feeding her flock near to the mountain side.
The shepherds knew not,
they knew not whither she was gone,
But after her lover Amyntas hied,
Up and down he wandered
while she was missing;
When he found her,
O then they fell a-kissing.
The story of the song is: a shepherd was feeding her flocks in the mountain lonely, and her boyfriend Amyntas was looking for her but other shepherds didn’t know where was she either. So he went up and down of the mountain, finally found her and then they fell a kissing…
Isn’t it a funny song? It was published in 1599 by John Farmer. In Wikipedia it says:
An English madrigal is different fro m an Italian madrigal because it uses nonsense syllables like fa la la la la to characterize the piece. Farmer uses clever word painting. For example, in the opening line “Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone”, Farmer had only the soprano sing since she was all alone. In the next line “Feeding her flock near to the mountain side”, all the voices sang since it was her flock. Additionally, the second phrase, which begins with “Up and down he wandered” and ends with “then they fell a-kissing” repeats, causing the elision “kissing up and down.”
I like the “up and down” part, feel so active when hearing this song.
Can’t wait to listen?
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曲名：Att Angora En Brygga
这是一首女对男的情歌，由女声部的四个女生所唱，情宜绵绵。写到这我想到了在地震新闻中看到的一幕幕夫妻，情侣互相鼓励维持生命，不离不弃的故事。一个 男子在他的女友成功并安全救出后，记者问他：“经过这次，你觉得你们的关系会怎样呢？”他说：“一生一世。”是啊，经历了这样的灾难，他们将手捥手一起坚 定地生活下去。祝福他们！
请听……
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Today, it comes to the English songs. The concert are coming into the LOVE part. There are three English songs, “April is in My Mistress Face”"Fair Phiyllis”"Mother I Will Have A Husband”,then was a solo song “A Bay in Anglesey”, a song by four girls “Att Angora En Brygga”, then a song written by a muscian in our choir “Serenad för Två”
This song I will post today, “April is in My Mistress Face” was written by Thomas Morley and published in the year 1594. There are 8 versions of this song already in CPDL.ORG.
Here’s a piece of news: there will be a concert to celebrate 600 years of choirs in Shanghai. You can go and listen if you are intereted. The second song of the concert is “April is in My Mistress Face”.
The lyrics are very simple please listen:
April is in my mistress’ face,
And July in her eyes hath place;
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.
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The song is “Woke up in the Summer Time” in English. It is so hard for to translate the lyrics, my Swedish is not good, and my English is not so good yet, even if I translate the lyrics, it’s also hard to understand. So today I will use some key words to introduce this song. When we are singing you can here these words “sommartid (summer time)”,”skratt (have laughed)”,”tyst (quiet)”,”drömma (dream)”,”kysst (kiss)”,”solen (the sun)”,”ros (rose)”,”önska (desired)”,”livet (the life)”…
From these words, we can imagine a beautiful summer time. Lovers are sitting in the grass, murmuring; kids are lying in their grandparents’ arms, listening to the stories, giggling and falling asleep and having a sweet dream…
In the Spring, it seems that everything is activated, you can feel lives, just stand in the sun and enjoy the weather. After the dark and cold winter here in Sweden, and also the strange April, Swedish people love summer time so much. You will see many people jogging, playing on the grass, you will be impressed that there ARE so many people in Sweden. So SUMMER should be a component of the Swedish music. We can see the two words “solen” and “önska” are very Swedish, people love the sun. “Vakna” in the title of this song makes people have a scene in their eyes that, you finally wake up from the whole winter, it’s time to enjoy the beautiful summer, you want to sing but you are afraid of break the beauties, so you sing quietly and beautifully.
The Key in this song changes many times, starts from Tenor and Base in C major, then comes Alto, then Soprano sings the melody in A major, the following is F major telling a story, finally ends in D major. It’s hard to sing without instrument’s accompany. We planed to used guitar, but the loud speaker was so low, we couldn’t hear the guitar when we were singing. Anyway, we could sing it without the guitar, and we did. 
Please enjoy…
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This is one of my favourite songs in this concert, the style is like the Chinese ballad. Just bring you guitar and you can sing. I’ve found it was in Jojje Wadenius’s album Goda’, goda’ it’s a really beautiful song.
Only A2 sings the melody and is accompanied by “do do”, so smart! Still, the meaning of this song needs to be explored 
Please enjoy…
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