Song Stories: The Lamb
Categories: Choiry Endeavours, Song Stories
The Lamb is a flowing, melismatic setting of William Blake’s poem. It exists in several versions and has been performed many times. It is one of my most popular songs.
It started out as a song for primary school children, in particular the school choir at Grangetown Primary School in Sunderland. It has quite a wide range for children and the melismas in the melody make the timings tricky, but they mastered it and in fact it became one of their, and the school’s favourite songs. In following years, the whole school sang it in their Christmas concerts and services.
This process has also happened at Alnwick South First School, where it was performed one year with an accompaniment from the local high school wind orchestra.
There is also an arrangement for high voices with piano accompaniment which is included in the Sea Pie Parcel collection of songs for young choirs and classes, where it is in unison voices apart from the round at the end.
Following this success, I made an arrangement of the song for SATB choir, specifically for the Rock Festival Choir, a chamber choir based in Northumberland and his has been performed by them on several occasions, as well as by choirs in New Zealand (including the Southern Consort of Voices in Dunedin) and around the world.
Here’s a nice bit of feedback from one member of one congregation who heard RFC sing: “Beautiful Candlemas service at Longhoughton with Rock Festival Choir. Setting of ‘The Lamb’ by @seapieparcel absolutely uplifting.”
Below is the arrangement of The Lamb for brass band and mixed choir, which was completed for performances by the Alnwick and District Choral Society in their annual festive concerts with the Reg Vardy Brass Band from County Durham. The photographs are from a return visit to wonderful friends and their beautiful part of the world in the Catlins, New Zealand. I spent a day assisting with the sheep on a farm, so I feel the pictures are appropriate for this song!
The Bridge Singers have also sung The Lamb several times and when given the chance they often vote for it in choir polls of their favourites. Here’s that choir performing it in 2017. The illustrations are by Dawn Minto, who is a soprano in the choir. Update 2025: It was voted in the Top 20 (out of 300) by The Bridge Singers in their poll of “Our favourite songs that we’ve ever sung”, and as a result it was included in their Christmas concerts in 2025.
The Bridge Singers also performed The Lamb at the funeral of our soprano Margaret in December 2023, at the request of her husband. Here’s a clip of that performance:
Click here to purchase scores of The Lamb:
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