Year-Round Music
Make your music selection, enter the number of singers, then click ‘add to cart’. Thank you!
Fun Popular Music
Ain’t We Got Fun
Listen to Entire Piece
“Ain’t We Got Fun” is a great hit from the Roaring 1920’s. Richard A. Whiting’s lively music for the lyrics of Raymond B. Egan and Gus Kahn have made this song a standard of the American Songbook. Arnold Harris has written an equally lively arrangement, focusing on the word “fun”, repeated constantly by each choral section in different ways. There is also much interplay between all the voices, adding another fun element to the arrangement for chorus members to sing and for the audience to enjoy.
Keep On The Sunny Side
Listen to Entire Piece
“Keep On The Sunny Side” was written in 1899 with words by Ada Blenkhorn and music by J. Howard Entwisle. It has great meaning as support for a positive outlook on life through all the struggles and problems every person encounters along the way!
The Carter Family popularized the song with their 1928 recording and it gained more fame again in 2000 in the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou?”
Arnold Harris has written a lively piano accompanied arrangement, featuring an acapella, barbershop style setting of the second verse, before returning to the original upbeat tune.
This song is perfect for any setting. Your chorus and audience will enjoy the music and the meaning.
Yes We Have No Bananas
Listen to Entire Piece
“Your chorus will enjoy the playful banter of “yes” or “no” in Arnold Harris’ fun arrangement of this great and well-known song from the 1920’s! This timeless standard combining Irving Cohn’s music and Frank Silver’s lyrics gains new life in Harris’ setting. There is also an opportunity for chorus members to be “jokesters” as well as a fun a cappella interlude in the middle of the piece. Chorus and audience alike will have a great time considering “Yes or no? Which is it now?”
Arnold Harris Originals
Carefree In The Caribbean
Listen to Entire Piece
Arnold Harris has written both the words and music of this delightful, fun and energetic two-part arrangement.
Active lyric imagery of a moment on a beautiful Caribbean beach combines with a happy and appropriately rhythmic piano accompaniment to create a fun arrangement, great for both young as well as experienced choruses.
This is a fun opportunity for a
drummer or percussion ensemble to create an exciting rhythmic accompaniment.
Hey! What a Gorgeous Day
Listen to Entire Piece
Imagining all the things that are special about a “gorgeous day” gave Arnold Harris the impetus to write this engaging two-part piece. It’s certainly true that “dreams are free” and that it’s good to take some time to “lie back and see the world, spinning in a whirl!” as this moment “might not come again!”
The Wind is Like My Love’s Heart
Listen to Entire Piece
Arnold Harris has written both the words and music of this sweet song about the vagaries of love, comparing the ease of the wind to change from “blowing hot to cold” to the equally swift changing of “my love’s heart”. The piano accompaniment supports all the imagery of the wind and breezes flowing across fields and flowers and streams and how hard it is for the narrator in “trying to hold” love and all its vagaries.
Mongolian
Uglee Shaazgai
Listen to Entire Piece
Arnold Harris has written a fun arrangement of a delightful song from Mongolia. This song tells the story of a chatty magpie going “jigger, jigger” and its interplay with other animals saying “narish narish” (come here).
The basses need not worry about replicating traditional Mongolian “throat singing”! With muchexchange of lyrics and sounds between all the choral sections, your ensemble and audience will enjoy the rendition. (NB The score uses the transliterated text).
French
Le Temps A Laissé Son Manteau
Listen to Entire Piece
Arnold Harris has written new music in an SATB a capella setting for a 15th century French poem about the coming of spring. This poem is well-known in France as a vehicle for teaching “old French”, but Harris has set the modern French version. The text is full of springtime imagery – “gleaming sunshine”, “silver drops” of running rivers and brooks, with the main concept being that animals, birds, people and nature itself, all put on new clothing as the season “removed its coat”.
Original Settings of Famous Poems
He Jests at Scars
Listen to Entire Piece
Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” is well known for its many beautiful, deep and amazing statements about love! Arnold Harris has chosen a different phrase to set, one that has deep meaning in another way. Romeo had just overheard Mercutio mocking his love for Rosaline and is thus moved to say, “He (Mercutio) jests at (my) scars who never felt a wound”, meaning that only a person who had never had their love rejected could make fun of it. This phrase could be found to have many other meanings as well in terms of relations
between people.
Arnold Harris’ setting adds “ha, ha” to the text throughout, giving the chorus the opportunity to “laugh”. The words “a wound!” are also repeated many times with extra stress. A key and meter change adds interest and depth to the arrangement. Your chorus will enjoy singing this setting and your audience brought into a deeper relationship with these powerful words by the incomparable William Shakespeare.
The Clod and the Pebble
Listen to Entire Piece
“The Clod & The Pebble”, is a poem from the famous English romantic poet William Blake’s (1757-1827) “Songs of Experience”. The poem is a discussion of whether love, as a humble clod of clay at the bottom of a brook states, “seeketh not itself to please, but for another gives its ease”. This contrasts with a pebble in the same brook as the clod that takes the opposite view that “love seeketh only self to please”.
The Fly
Listen to Entire Piece
“The Fly”, a poem from the famous English romantic poet William Blake’s (1757-1827) “Songs of Experience” focuses our thoughts on the life of a little common fly. Blake muses for example how “my thoughtless hand” has “brushed away” the fly’s summer play. Arnold Harris has mirrored the text in his a cappella SATB setting with a thoughtful section juxtaposed with a lively, dance like section accompanying Blake’s awareness that the fly, like a person, dances and drinks and sings. Changes of key and meter give extra life to this unaccompanied setting.
The Quality of Mercy
Listen to Entire Piece
From William Shakespeare’s play, “The Merchant of Venice”, Arnold Harris has set Portia’s famous speech, “The Quality of Mercy”.
In a flowing 5/4 meter with a slow and thoughtful tempo, Harris brings music to match the meaning of Shakespeare’s timeless words about the rewards for both the one who gives and the one who receives “mercy”.
When You Do Dance
Listen to Entire Piece
Dance is an important element of Shakespeare’s play “A Winter’s Tale” Arnold Harris has set Florizel’s speech to Perdita, where he urges her “to do nothing but to dance and move” and wishes her “a wave o’ th’ sea” among other wishes that she always continue to dance. The continuing dance-like rhythmic flow of the music enhances the meaning and feeling of the words.
American Folk Songs
Shenandoah
Listen to Entire Piece
“Shenandoah” is among the most famous traditional American folk songs. There are many versions of its origins, with some tracing as far back as the 16th century among French Canadian fur traders on the Great Lakes. It has a history as a sea shanty as well. There are also many versions of the lyrics, with most mentioning falling in love with the daughter of Chief Shenandoah of the Oneida Iroquois.
Barbershop
That Old Gang of Mine
Listen to Entire Piece
That Old Gang of Mine, a classic song with music by the great Ray Henderson and lyrics by the famous team of Billy Rose and Mort Dixon, tells a nostalgic tale of looking backwards to one’s youth with great yearning. Arnold Harris has written a fun Barbershop Style arrangement with consistent echoed interchanges of key phrases between the sections. This arrangement is in the classic Barbershop style and is set in SATB format.