When I first considered making a CD recording, I wondered what would be the best selection of music to feature. I wanted something that would mesh with my classical, vocal training, but would still appeal to my local audience. English and Irish folk songs and ballads strongly appeal to me. These songs have a long history, yet modern man can still easily identify with them. Thankfully, many British, Irish and American musicians have worked over the years to preserve this wealth of music. Classical composers of these countries, too, have found ample inspiration in these lyrical melodies. It is primarily the works of these composers that I have chosen to present on this CD.

One can hardly think about contemporary English vocal music without the name of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) coming to mind. His offering of folk song arrangements from Great Britain and Ireland is prodigious. I have only offered a small selection of them here. In regards to the Irish settings of his that I am presenting, Britten’s inspiration for these is found in Thomas Moore’s (1779-1852) and Sir John Stevenson’s (1760-1833) Irish Melodies and National Melodies. Britten mentions in his preface to Folksong Arrangements: Volume 4, that he also drew upon Edward Bunting’s (1773-1843) Ancient Music of Ireland. Rising Irish Nationalism motivated Moore, Stevenson and Bunting to help preserve the Harper’s art. While this music was frequently performed in that time period upon the harp or other folk instruments, Stevenson and Bunting produced vocal and piano arrangements. Certainly, this action made performance of these folk songs more accessible to a number of people. In “Dear Harp of My Country” and “The Last Rose of Summer”, Britten’s treatment of the piano accompaniment is “harp-like” in nature, featuring arpeggiated, or rolled chords. In “The Minstrel Boy”, Britten’s piano writing brings to mind the sound of drums marching one into battle and well expresses the strong nationalistic intent of the poem. I have also included two selections by Britten whose origins lie in Great Britain. His descriptive setting of the Scottish, nonsensical lullaby “O Can Ye Sew Cushions”, echoes a mother rocking and bouncing her baby. Britten effectively sets “The Trees They Grow So High” in a circular fashion, starting the voice unaccompanied and ending it in the same way. He slowly builds the accompaniment of the piece to its tragic climax, and then lets it ebb away dynamically and harmonically, leaving the listener with the lone voice of the woman singing about her now fatherless child.

English composer, Roger Quilter (1877-1953), also does not fail to give us appealing arrangements of folk music. His simple, generally diatonic settings colorfully support the vocal line by featuring rich seventh chords or added seconds and fourths. I have selected his cheerful, charming arrangement of Thomas Moore’s hedonistic poem “Oh ‘Tis Sweet to Think” and his haunting arrangement of Robert Burns’s (1759-1796) poem, “Ca’ the Yowes to the Knowes”. Burns wrote two versions to this poem and Quilter makes his arrangement based upon Burns’s second version. His arrangement of the familiar Welsh melody, “The Ash Grove” uses text that is, perhaps, less familiar than other versions. Despite this, it still maintains the themes of the most commonly heard translations: the timelessness of friendship and family and the power of nature to awaken those dear memories. I believe that people, who are unfamiliar with the contemporary, classical idiom, will find Quilter’s music to be attractive and accessible.

Percy Grainger (1882-1961), a contemporary of Quilter, was born in Australia. He lived in London from 1901 to 1914 and moved after that period of time to America, where he resided for the rest of his life. Many European countries at the turn of the century were driven to preserve elements of their national heritage. Grainger, himself, was quite swept up in this nationalistic movement and had an interest in preserving the folk music of the English heritage. He traveled the English countryside making wax cylinder recordings of native folksingers. His music, at times, has a very complex appearance as he was trying to exactly notate the improvisational rhythms of the singers. He even went so far as to give a pronunciation key, so that the performer could replicate the dialect of the region. His setting of “The Sprig of Thyme” features a very rich, lusty sound. It suggests the earthy and worldly-wise character of the speaker in this traditional text. “Died for Love” was originally scored for a small chamber ensemble of woodwinds or strings. Belying the smoothness and simplicity of the vocal line, the accompaniment features intricately interwoven moving lines which aptly express the underlying agitation of the speaker in the poem. (next column)

Also known for his efforts at preserving the English body of folk music, Cecil J. Sharp (1859-1924) collected and arranged folk songs and had them published in a collection called 100 English Folk Songs. He arranged all of the songs using very conservative harmonies so as not to “rob them of their most characteristic folk-qualities, and thereby convert them into art-songs...” (Sharp, 1916, 100 English Folk Songs, pg. xv-xvi). Sharp strongly wished that the music be made available to the English people. He also felt that

“...of the many distinctive characteristics of the folk-air one of the most vital—at any rate, the one I would least willingly sacrifice—is that which makes it impossible to put a date or assign a period to it, which gives to the folk-air the quality of permanence, makes it impervious to the passage of time, and so enables it to satisfy equally the artistic ideals of every age” (Sharp, 1916, 100 English Folk Songs, pg. xv).

Sharp’s setting of “Bruton Town” has an interesting and lengthy origin in that its story is the same as Boccaccio’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil”, from the Decameron. As is common with folk songs, one melody may be set with different texts. Conversely, a text (or one similar to it) may be set with different melodies. Such is the case with “The Sprig of Thyme”. This text has a number of variations and is set to several different melodies. One can note similarities between the text Sharp uses and the Grainger text, but the melodies are quite different.

All that remains are the two American composers featured on this CD. Many foreign folk songs found their way over the ocean and have integrated themselves into the American folk repertoire. Such is especially the case with “O Waly, Waly” (actually of English origin), also known as “The Water is Wide”. Celius Dougherty (1902-1986), a prolific art song composer born in Minnesota, provides a descriptive accompaniment of the stormy love story depicted in the song. John Corigliano (b. 1938), an active composer of contemporary music, has provided the arrangement for “She Moved Through the Fair”. This song actually completes a set called Three Irish Folksong Settings. Padraic Colum (1881-1972), a popular Irish poet at the turn of the century, discovered this ballad and reworked the words. The vocal part is accompanied by a solo flute. The flute provides many sweeping flourishes and alternates contrasting melodic fragments with unison with the voice—perhaps representing the lover as she flits into and out of the speaker’s sight. The flute and the voice finally come together rhythmically for a full verse at the end of the song—ironically this falls at the point the listener realizes that his lover has died.