Wilt Thou Forgive? 4-Part - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.965556

Wilt Thou Forgive? is a setting of the John Donne poem, A Hymn to God the Father. John Donne (1572 – 1631) was one of the greatest of the metaphysical poets in England, a group that included George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and possibly John Milton. An Anglican priest with a less than perfect moral reputation, Donne expressed through his poetry (notably, the Holy Sonnets) the incongruities of human attempts at living the Christian life.

In the present poem, the speaker reveals his struggles with sin-the sin he was born with, the sin he commits daily, the sin through which he influences others to sin, and the sin he has quit for a short while, only to take up again for many more years. He confesses yet another sin: the fear that he will "perish on the shore," presumably to die with unforgiven sins, consigned to eternal damnation. His desperate plea is that God’s Son "shall shine as he shines now and heretofore." If God answers this prayer, he will fear no more, and will know that all his sins, including the sin of fear, are finally forgiven.

This musical setting uses subtle inflection of rhythm and meter to mirror the text, aiming for natural prosody of speech and expressive accentuation. Melodic contours emphasize important words, while harmonic placement projects the various moods throughout the poem. The key relationships involve mostly shifts of minor 3rds; starting in D minor, the piece moves through several keys, reaching its final statement in D major. A variety of textures maintains aural interest: clusters and close harmony, full divisi chords, and an imitative passage painting the words, "won others to sin, and made my sin their door." A series of shimmering major chords brings the work to a close, declaiming the words, "Thy Son shall shine as he shines now and heretofore," and, "I fear no more."