Sounds in the Night

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This composition is a very effective combination of spoken voice and descriptive piano music based on the following poem “Sounds in the Night” by Peter Gillespie:


            Bingitty, dingitty, bogidee boo,

            a monster’s sleeping in my room,

            gruesome green eyes with veins of red,

            waiting there beneath my bed.


            Until I close my eyes to sleep,

            slowly then he’ll start to creep

            up the mattress, under cover,

            to nibble one ear, and then the other!


            Slithering, sickening ball of slime,

            why don’t you wait, until next time?

            When tummy’s empty to eat me whole,

            have you no mercy, heart, or soul?


            His breath grows cold upon my neck,

            I search my mind for ways to protect

            my scrumptious young body he wants to consume,

            so I start thrashing about small bed in my room.


            Then all at once I’m blinded by light,

            I sit straight and tall, shaking with fright,

             “What are you doing?” a voice seems to say,

            “Now is no time; we play when it’s day!”


            “But Mom!” I exclaim, in a squeaky faint sound,

            “an ugly green thing under my bed I found,

            it wanted to eat me all up for its meal,

            so I fought for my life, my struggle was real!”


            “To sleep!” she replied, no more would she hear.

            Fine for her, she’s got nothing to fear.

            Light faded out, I laid my head down,

            hoping that dreams would soon come around.


            Sleep slithers slowly with nothing to do,

            but thinking of thoughts that only I knew:

            Clickety, clackety, rickety roo,

            Monster, Monster, you’re full now, aren’t you?


            © 2010 Peter Gillespie


Instrumentation:  Dramatic Voice Narration and Piano

Duration:  6 minutes