The text and what-have-you

In November, our Mara wrote:

In an effort to delay bedtime, Emma sat down with her ukulele and improvised a song. She legit made up these lyrics on the spot. #deep #epicbedtimeshenanigans

It’s all right, you’ll feel better soon.

I don’t care if you get a little wound.

It’s okay, I still love you,

Even if I don’t care.

But it’s a good thing to not care,

It’s not our business.

But sometimes it is us.

I don’t care but where I’m going,

It might be just a little trust.

I need to stay my own way,

When I find what I do,

And who might tell me to.

I need to go to my own way,

It might happen today.

I don’t care what I do,

Who tells me to?

It is us who doesn’t care,

And it’s us who does care

If you give your business.

It’s all right to share,

It’s all right to share,

When we’re tired,

It’s all right to share.

Following up in late December, I sent to Mara:

Psst, I really do mean to set Emma’s “It’s all right to share” to my own music, if she will permit.

And her reply:

That’s great!  I asked her about it, and she said yes!

The last word of the second line can be made to rhyme either with ‘crowned’ or with ‘crooned’;  maybe it should be the latter, echoing the vowel of ‘soon’ – or maybe no rhyme is meant.  Back when I first thought about the text, I was planning to use that stanza twice, and use both pronunciations.  However, as the music flowed forth, there was no space (or, need) for the duplication . . . so I have reached out to the author’s mum, to ascertain the intended reading.

Musically, I do think it is done.  I am proofing the score, mostly for the odd beaming tweak.  I expect a piano reduction will be a good idea (though the men of Triad would manage just fine without).

Once I set to work on the setting, I (perhaps arbitrarily) aimed for a 5-minute piece.  Before I had a solid sense of the rate at which the text would play out in the setting, I drew up a scheme for stanzas to bring back after the end of the text as received (including the alternate “I don’t care if you get a little wound”).  It turned out that there was no need for the extra repetition, and all I ‘added’ at the end were the lines (as they appeared on my penciled ‘expansion’:

I need to go to my own way,

It might happen today.