This edition was prepared by Robin Doveton — free to download, print, rehearse and perform.
Fain would I change that note
Staff Notation • Secular, Partsongs
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Fain would I change that note by Charles Wood — Lyrics
Fain would I change that note
To which fond Love hath charm’d me
Long, long to sing by rote,
Fancying that that harm’d me:
Yet when this thought doth come,
“Love is the perfect sum
Of all delight,”
I have no other choice
Either for pen or voice
To sing or write.
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About Fain would I change that note
Charles Wood’s Fain would I change that note is a rich four-part setting for mixed voices. The music immediately responds to the text’s lyrical flow, with interwoven melodic lines and a generally homophonic texture that powerfully declaims the words. The composer captures the madrigal-like sense of playful wit in the first stanza, where the singer considers changing a note that has captured his affections. This gives way to a more fervent, impassioned declaration of love’s sweetness and essential goodness in the second stanza, the SATB writing expanding to fill the sound with praise and adoration. It is a thoroughly engaging and rewarding part-song.
