Sheet Music: Days of Absence

TitleDays of Absence
Alternate titlesRousseau's Dream
Go Tell Aunt Rhody
The Old Grey Goose
ComposerTraditional
InstrumentationFlute duet
KeyD major
RangeF#4–D6
Time signature4/4
Tempo100 BPM
Performance time0:50
Difficulty leveleasy
Download printable scorePDF Sheet Music (54 kB) (preview)
Download audio tracksMIDI (change tempo/key) MP3 (399 kB)
Play-along accompanimentMIDI (change tempo/key) MP3 (438 kB)
Date added2019-07-21
Last updated2019-07-21
Download popularity index☆☆☆☆☆ 0.4 (below average)
Categories
Love songs, Lullabies, Nursery rhymes, Traditional/Folk

Performances

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Sunday 21 July 2019

Tune of the Day: Days of Absence

arranged for two flutes

This song was originally a love serenade in the 1752 one-act opera Le devin du village (“The Village Soothsayer”) by French philosopher, writer and composer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. You may recognize its tune as the ancestor to the popular American lullaby “Go Tell Aunt Rhody”.

Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Cloth'd in sorrow's dark array;
Days of absence, I am weary,
She I love is far away.

The present arrangement for two flutes appeared in Blake's Young Flutist's Magazine, published in Philadelphia in 1833.