Were I A King

MIDI recording

Perusal scores are downloadable and viewable but not printable.

Instrumentation: Unaccompanied SATB chorus

Duration: ca. 4 minutes 30 seconds

Text: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Year composed: 2025

Place composed: Shawnee, KS

Program Notes: Were I A King is a memento mori, a reminder of mortality. (The Latin phrase “memento mori” literally means “remember to die.”) Regardless of which of the options presented we would choose — to be a king, to be obscure, or to be dead — the poem reminds us that one day, we will all die. And it is only in the awareness of mortality that we can find meaning in life. The psychiatrist Irvin Yalom has written, “Although the physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death saves us.”