How stands the glass around? (Anonymous)

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Editor: Christopher Shaw (submitted 2007-12-02).   Score information: A4, 2 pages   Copyright: Personal
Edition notes: Please click on the link for preview/playback/PDF download.

General Information

Title: How stands the glass around?
Composer: Anonymous

Number of voices: 3vv   Voicing: ATB

Genre: SecularPartsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

{{Published}} is obsolete (code commented out), replaced with {{Pub}} for works and {{PubDatePlace}} for publications.

Description: A favourite song of General Wolfe, allegedly sung by him at Québec the night before his death. But the legend relies on an inexact reading of the description in Krifft's "Siege of Québec, a sonata" (c. 1797): "A favorite song of General Wolfe's & sung the evening before the engagement wherein he was killed". The present harmonization is that of Krifft, who completed "The siege of Quebec" after the majority had been composed by Kotzwara, before his untimely death from erotic asphyxiation (Kotwara's "Battle of Prague" was a favourite of Jane Austen). The song appears first in a ballad opera of 1729 called "The Patron" (I have not seen this source) and bears more than a passing resemblance to an Act Tune by Jeremiah Clarke associated with the play "A wife for any man", 1696.

External websites:

Original text and translations

English.png English text

1.
How stands the glass around?
For shame ye take no care, my boys!
How stands the glass around?
Let mirth and wine abound.
The trumpets sound,
the colours they are flying boys
To fight, kill or wound.
May we still be found,
Content with our hard fare, my boys,
On the cold, cold ground.

2.
Why, soldiers, why,
Should we be melancholy, boys?
Why, soldiers, why?
Whose business is to die!
What sighing? Fie!
Damn fear, drink on, be jolly, boys.
'Tis he, you or I.
Cold, hot, wet or dry,
We're always bound to follow, boys,
And scorn to fly.

3.
'Tis but in vain,
(I mean not to upbraid you, boys),
'Tis but in vain
For soldiers to complain.
Should next campaign
Send us to Him who made us, boys,
We're free from pain.
But should we remain,
A bottle and kind landlady
Cures all again.