Laughing Song (Mixed Choir): Mixed Voices (SSATB)

This setting captures Blake's playful irreverence with music that's equally spirited and musically sophisticated. Praulinš writes for all four voices with equal agency, avoiding the trap of reducing upper voices to decorative support, and the piece's popularity at international competitions reflects not novelty but genuine compositional craft that stands up to repeat hearings.

The piece radiates intellectual joy. Praulinš's harmony is sophisticated without being forbidding; the writing feels playful and almost mischievous, matching Blake's celebration of laughter as a form of human freedom. There's a lightness to the texture that prevents the piece from ever feeling heavy or pretentious, even as the choral writing demands real ensemble skill.

This work suits advanced high school and college choirs with solid intonation and the rhythmic confidence to navigate Praulinš's contemporary harmonic language. It's an excellent choice for competitive festival participation or concert programming when you want a secular work with genuine artistic depth and audience appeal.

• Treat the text as character work, not decoration. Blake's imagery demands clear diction and intentional phrasing; underline the wit by releasing tension at structural points rather than pushing through.
• Balance exuberance with control in the upper voices. Sopranos and altos can sound thin or shrill if they're racing the tempo; lock in rhythmically with the lower voices and let the harmonic color emerge from precision, not volume.
• Shape phrases by the syntax of Blake's lines, not by musical bar lines. The poem's natural speech rhythms should inform your conducting gesture and your singers' breathing choices.
• Explore the full dynamic range. This piece thrives on contrast. The quieter moments land harder and the jubilant sections sing more freely when you've truly stepped back earlier.

Program this as a centerpiece for a concert built around Blake or Romantic poetry, or as a standalone showcase for your choir's vocal agility and interpretive maturity. Its popularity on the competition circuit makes it an excellent preparation piece if you're targeting regional or national festivals; the existing body of recorded performances gives singers concrete interpretive models.

• Reading contemporary harmonic language and maintaining intonation through non-functional chord progressions
• Balancing tonal weight across four independent voice parts without relying on doubling
• Shaping phrases by poetic and syntactic structure rather than by musical bar lines
• Coordinating complex rhythmic figures across all voices to achieve ensemble precision
• Interpreting text with dramatic intention while maintaining musical line