Carry On My Song

Our humble contribution to this year's Music In Our Schools Month is this peaceful and delicate folk-like song.

Once again, we have indicated an oboe part in the music, which is played on our recording, but which is optional if you are performing without the recording. The piano part for this song is certainly simple enough to play and would be quite effective as it is with just singers. If you have an oboist, flutist, or other solo instrumentalist to perform the oboe line, it should be simple enough to add it.

The song is unison, short, repetitive lyrically, and simple rhythmically. To enhance the performance, we suggest that you include the sign language for the words, "Carry on my song" only. These signs occur during the held portions of the song, approximately every four bars. The one exception to this is the phrase in measure 18, which is only a half note instead of a whole note. To accommodate this alteration, we indicate that only "carry on" instead of "carry on my song" be used here. Also, during the fermata in the last measure, you could have all of your singers sign one last time.

If you do use the recording, you will hear a string, brass, piano and bass background only. The tune is simple, and our orchestration keeps it that way.

For ease of teaching the sign language, we have included reproducible illustrations on the lyric page (page 43).