Three Welsh Folk Songs (for 4 flutes) BEN HENEGHAN

Three Welsh Folksongs (Two Arrangements and a Dream)

for flute quartet (3 flutes and alto flute)

1. Ar Hyd y Nos (All Through the Night)

2. Sospan Fach

3. Suo Gân

These songs are well known all over Wales, and wherever Welsh people gather near beer.

Ar Hyd Y Nos uses starlight as a symbol of, among other things, heavenly glory and human compassion.

Sospan Fach sings about two saucepans, an ailing servant, a hurt finger, and a fierce cat.

And finally, one of the most beautiful lullabies on the planet, Suo Gân: there are so many arrangements of this last song that I thought it would be okay to expand on it a bit. It turned into a reverie, in which fragments of the first two songs show up, interlocked with glimpses of the future life of the baby who is being rocked to sleep, and who finally drifts off, leaving the lullaby hanging unfinished in the air.