Download Booklet

COMPLETE SOLO SONGS Geraldine McGreevy soprano • Adrian Thompson tenor Roderick Williams baritone • John Talbot piano Ernest John Moeran Ernest John Moeran (1894–1950) Complete Solo Songs premiere recordings * COMPACT DISC ONE 1 Spring goeth all in white*† 1:21 (Robert Seymour Bridges) 2 When June is come*† 1:11 (Robert Seymour Bridges) 3 Mantle of Blue*† 1:56 (Padraic Colum) 4 Twilight*† 1:48 (John Edward Masefield) Ludlow Town† 9:38 (Alfred Edward Housman) 5 1 When smoke stood up from Ludlow 3:42 6 2 Farewell to barn and stack and tree 2:37 7 3 Say, lad, have you things to do? 1:28 8 4 The lads in their hundreds 1:51 Two Songs‡ 3:13 9 1 The Bean Flower 2:03 (Dorothy Leigh Sayers) 10 2 Impromptu in March 1:10 (Doreen A.E. Wallace) 3 § 11 In Youth Is Pleasure 2:20 (Robert Wever) § 12 The Merry Month of May 2:01 (Thomas Dekker) 13 A Dream of Death† 3:06 (William Butler Yeats) 14 Come Away, Death*† 2:17 (William Shakespeare) 15 Troll the Bowl*† 1:23 (Thomas Dekker) 16 Can’t You Dance the Polka!† 1:23 (Sea shanty, author anonymous) Members of Weybridge Male Voice Choir 17 Mrs Dyer, the Baby Farmer*† 4:01 (Victorian crime ballad, author anonymous) Members of Weybridge Male Voice Choir 18 Maltworms† 2:19 (Attributed to William Stevenson) Members of Weybridge Male Voice Choir Seven Poems by James Joyce† 12:10 19 1 Strings in the earth and air 1:39 20 2 The Merry Green Wood 1:11 21 3 Bright cap 0:46 22 4 The Pleasant Valley 1:25 23 5 Donnycarney 1:23 4 24 6 Rain has fallen 1:47 25 7 Now, O now, in this brown land 3:59 TT 50:09 COMPACT DISC TWO 1 When I came last to Ludlow† 1:17 (Alfred Edward Housman) 2 ’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town† 1:31 (Alfred Edward Housman) 3 Far in a western brookland† 2:30 (Alfred Edward Housman) 4 Loveliest of trees† 1:41 (Alfred Edward Housman) 5 Oh fair enough are sky and plain (first version)† 2:22 (Alfred Edward Housman) 6 Oh fair enough are sky and plain (second version)*† 2:25 (Alfred Edward Housman) 7 Oh fair enough are sky and plain (third version)*† 2:46 (Alfred Edward Housman) § 8 Weep you no more* 2:15 (Sixteenth century, author anonymous) § 9 The Sweet o’ the Year 0:58 (William Shakespeare) 5 § 10 The Day of Palms* 3:18 (Arthur William Symons) § 11 Blue-eyed Spring* 1:13 (Robert Nichols) 12 Rosefrail‡ 1:18 (James Joyce) 13 Tilly*‡ 2:26 (James Joyce) 14 Rahoon‡ 3:04 (James Joyce) § Four English Lyrics 8:11 15 1 Cherry Ripe 1:54 (Thomas Campion) 16 2 Willow Song 1:30 (John Fletcher) 17 3 The Constant Lover 1:32 (William Browne) 18 4 The Passionate Shepherd 3:15 (Christopher Marlowe) Four Shakespeare Songs‡ 5:33 19 1 The Lover and his Lass 1:37 20 2 Where the bee sucks 1:28 21 3 When daisies pied 1:16 22 4 When icicles hang by the wall 1:12 6 § 23 Diaphenia 2:11 (Henry Chettle or Henry Constable) § 24 Rosaline* 3:25 (Thomas Lodge) § 25 The Monk’s Fancy* 2:14 (Henry J. Hope) § 26 Invitation in Autumn* 4:10 (Seumas O’Sullivan) 27 If There Be Any Gods*‡ 1:19 (Seumas O’Sullivan) Six Poems of Seumas O’Sullivan‡ 12:23 28 1 Evening 1:59 29 2 The Poplars 2:13 30 3 A Cottager 2:02 31 4 The Dustman 1:04 32 5 Lullaby 2:29 33 6 The Herdsman 2:36 TT 68:32 Geraldine McGreevy soprano‡ § Adrian Thompson tenor Roderick Williams baritone† John Talbot piano 7 E.J. Moeran: The Solo Songs Ernest John Moeran (1894–1950), known personal compositional style. Thereafter he led professionally as E.J. Moeran and to his personal a basically peripatetic life, moving periodically friends and family as Jack, was of mixed English among various parts of southern England and and Irish ancestry. His English mother, the western Ireland, and prone to periods of excessive daughter of the wealthy Kent industrialist George drinking which may have been related to his earlier Smeed, was born in King’s Lynn and raised in wartime experiences. At the age of fifty-one he Kent. His Irish father, an Anglican vicar, was born married the concert cellist Peers Coetmore, who in Dublin and taken permanently, as a baby, to within a few years had moved without him to live England; here he later spent many years in Norfolk, permanently in Melbourne, Australia. Moeran died where his grandfather had lived before him. Jack of a cerebral haemorrhage on 1 December 1950, on himself was born at Isleworth in Middlesex on the pier at Kenmare in the far south-west of Ireland 31 December 1894, and raised at Bacton in Norfolk. (his preferred home in his latter years) while out He completed his early education at Uppingham walking during a strong Atlantic gale. The emotional School, and followed it with two years as a and spiritual legacy of his dual nationality is in student at the Royal College of Music. Enlisting tangible evidence throughout his life and music. at the outbreak of First World War hostilities, he His earliest known surviving solo song is an saw service on the Western Front as a despatch unpublished setting of a poem by Cicely Fox cyclist, and in 1917 received a shrapnel wound to Smith (1882–1954) – ‘The North Sea Ground’ – the the neck, which curtailed his active duties and manuscript of which was discovered in 2000 in effectively allowed him to return to the pursuit of the archives of the Oxford and Cambridge Musical a musical career. Club, which had been established in London in 1899 Discharged from the army in 1919, he resumed and of which Moeran was a member from 1912 to study at the Royal College of Music, with John 1930. Dated 4 April 1915, the song was written in Ireland, and began also to seek out, transcribe, and the year after Moeran enlisted but two years before arrange traditional English folksongs – in particular he was sent to the Western Front, and represents those of his East Anglia – whose ethos and melodic a significant discovery for Moeran scholarship. It characteristics were enduringly to affect his was unfortunately not available for inclusion in the 8 present recording, but there are hopes that it will be The following year, in 1925, Moeran set ’Tis time, published and recorded in the near future. I think, by Wenlock town and Far in a western Prior to this recent discovery, the earliest brookland, the latter a reworking of the song with known surviving songs by Moeran were Four Songs the same title already mentioned in connection from ‘A Shropshire Lad’ (A.E. Housman), written in with the four 1916 settings. Both were published in ‘Midsummer 1916’ according to the manuscript 1926. Moeran has described, in a letter to Leonard now held in the library of the Victorian College of Duck, how he came to write ‘’Tis time, I think, by the Arts in Melbourne. Of this collection, which Wenlock town’: was published complete for the first time in an …I thought [it] out in the train between Paddington Appendix to Volume Three of Moeran’s Collected and Westbury and then, after lunch at my Solo Songs in the Thames Publishing Centenary destination, wrote it straight down as it now Edition, the second song, When I came last to stands in print. Ludlow, was first published separately in 1919 in In 1931 came Loveliest of trees, published the the journal Arts and Letters, while the fourth, ‘Far in following year, and Oh fair enough are sky and plain a western brookland’, was subsequently rewritten, which remained unpublished in Moeran’s lifetime. and published in 1926 (see below). Only the second Both settings were dedicated to the baritone song of this group is included in the present George Parker. Between 1931 and 1934 Moeran recording. produced two revised manuscripts of the second, Of the nine known modern English poets his last Housman song. From the evidence of his whose verse Moeran set in his solo songs, correspondence with Parker, Moeran wished the A.E. Housman (1859–1936) provides the most last, third version of ‘Oh fair enough are sky and numerous examples. In all, including the four songs plain’ to replace the earliest – though this evidently mentioned above, there are twelve settings, of did not happen, for when the song was eventually which one, ‘Oh fair enough are sky and plain’, exists published, in 1957, it was in its original version. in three closely related versions – all recorded Moeran first achieved publication of any of his here. The first four of these twelve to receive full songs in 1924, which in addition to Ludlow Town publication, in 1924, were those comprising the witnessed the appearance of four further solo songs: Ludlow Town cycle, written in 1920 – the year after two, each published separately, with texts by the Moeran had been released from military service – then Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges (1844–1930), and first performed on 17 December 1924 at the entitled Spring goeth all in white (written in 1920) Wigmore Hall by the baritone John Goss and pianist and When June is come (written in 1923); and two G. O’Connor Morris. based on individual poems by Dorothy L. Sayers 9 (1893–1957) – ‘The Bean Flower’ – and Doreen in Oxford Poetry 1919.

Load more