MODERN ENGLISH Songs
Sung by JOHN THORNE (Baritone)
Songs by Vaughan Williams
The Vagabond
Silent Noon
The Water Mill
RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS was born at
Down Ampney, in Gloucestershire, in 1872. Many English people regard him as one of the greatest living composers, and this view has some support outside Britain.
Of the three songs here chosen, the first two are comparatively early composition. The Vagabond shares with Linden Lea the greatest popularity that Vaughan Williams has achieved. It is also surely one of the two or three finest ' tramp ' songs ever written. It is one of seven settings from R. L. Stevenson 's ' Songs of Travel.'
Silent Noon (from settings from D. G. Rossetti 's
'The House of Life') is in very different style and spirit-a phase which, in fact, Vaughan Williams seems to have long left behind him. It is a song of love and Nature mingled.
The Water Mill, one of Vaughan Williams 's latest songs, is enough answer to anyone who suspects him of any clumsiness or heaviness. It ripples along, easily and inconsequently, telling of a mill, an ancient one, brown with rain, and dry with sun,' of the whirring wheel and roaring waters, of the miller's tabby eat, of his wife and 'eldest girl,' and of the day's round.