Ay waukin’ O

Hugh S. Roberton’s Ay waukin’ O is a touching setting of a Lowland Scots text for SATB choir. The music immediately captures the singer’s sleepless melancholy, with interwoven vocal lines painting a picture of quiet suffering and longing. The gentle, lyrical phrases reflect the singer’s weariness and inability to find solace in sleep, preoccupied as they are with thoughts of their ‘Dearie’. The contrast between the beauty of summer and the singer’s distress is subtly drawn, before the final verse’s poignant image of tear-filled eyes in the lonely night. This is a deeply felt and evocative part-song, ideal for conveying profound emotion.