Anna
Lapwood

Drop down, ye heavens

For mixed choir (SATB with divisi & organ)
Duration: 5 minutes

I used to compose almost every day when I was a teenager but find it very hard to carve out the time for it now! Every now and then I get an idea that I can’t resist trying out, though, and this is what happened with Drop down, ye heavens. I was in the middle of finalising Pembroke College’s Advent service repertoire with just a couple of weeks to go, and I couldn’t decide on a setting of the Advent Prose to open the service. I left my desk to go and conduct the choir rehearsing and singing Compline, and came out a couple of hours later fizzing with ideas. I went and sat in my office, played around on the piano, and three hours later, had written this piece. I was really excited to hear what the choir thought as I had written it with their voices in mind, and so I typed it up and we sang it through at our next rehearsal. We ended up singing it at our Advent service the following week and recording it a couple of months later.

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Text

Drop down, ye heavens, from above,
and let the skies pour down righteousness.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
my salvation shall not tarry:
I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions.
Fear not, for I will save thee:
For I am the Lord thy God,
the holy one of Israel, thy Redeemer.

Advent Prose (Rorate cæli)

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