Lydia Kakabadse: As I Sat At The Cafe – for mezzo soprano or alto and piano (NXP128)

This is a sheet music edition of As I Sat At The Cafe by the composer Lydia Kakabadse.

Sheet music for mezzo soprano or alto and piano

Music: Lydia Kakabadse
Words: From the poem How Pleasant It Is To Have Money by Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)

Score: 10 pages

Audio sample

Preface and programme notes

Set to selected verses from Arthur Hugh Clough’s poem How pleasant it is to have money, this work is written in the G Dorian mode in folk jazz style, infusing folk-based music with a jazz timbre.

The poem focuses on social injustice and the many privileges that are associated with having money (as emphasized in the refrain) and highlights the conflicts between rich and poor as well as personal satisfaction and social conscience.

Lydia Kakabadse

Words

As I sat at the café, I said to myself,
They may talk as they please about what they call pelf,
They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking,
But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking,
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.

It was but last winter I came up to Town,
But already I’m getting a little renown;
I make new acquaintance where’er I appear
I am not too shy, and have nothing to fear.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

We sit at our tables and tipple champagne;
Ere one bottle goes, comes another again;
The waiters they skip and they scuttle about,
And the landlord attends us so civilly out.
So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
So pleasant it is to have money.

A gondola here, and a gondola there,
‘Tis the pleasantest fashion of taking the air.
To right and to left; stop, turn, and go yonder,
And let us repeat, o’er the tide as we wander,
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money.