Aftonkväde
by Carl Michael Bellman


This ode (to the god of Night) is from Bellman's collection "Fredmans sånger" (Fredman's songs).

There are some instructions written in Swedish on page 1:


Dessa två verser kan eventuellt utföras av damkör i stället 
(speciellt om man vill ha det mindre "murrigt").
->
These two verses/strophes (numbers 1 and 2) may be sung by a women's choir instead 
(especially if you want to avoid the "deep cellar sound").


Om man sjunger många verser passar det bra att lägga in instrumentalavsnitt här och där 
för att bryta "enformigheten".
->
If you sing many of the verses, it may be convenient to have some instrumental performance 
between some of the verses, to break the "monotony" of the a capella singing.


Vid dubblering av stämmorna: viss hänsyn har tagits till hur en blandad kör "brukar" se ut 
(små mansstämmor, stor altstämma et c.). Ändra vid behov!
->
When voices are doubled (e.g., Soprano 1 and Soprano 2 sing identical parts): the particular
voices to double have been chosen with respect to the structure of the "normal" (Swedish)
mixed choir: few tenors (and sometimes also few bassos), many altos, et c. Feel free to make 
doubled voices according to the voice mixture of your own choir.

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The lyrics of each verse are rather self-dependent, so you may remove almost any verse without 
destroying the context of the song (except for the first and last verse). You can also combine 
lyrics and music almost arbitrarily; the only case when the music is strongly connected to 
the lyrics is in verse 10, bar number 101: the falsetto in Tenor 1 (which of course can 
be removed).