MODERN ENGLISH SONGS
Sung by JOHN THORNE (Baritone)
Songs by PETER WARLOCK
As ever I saw
The Bayley beareth the bell away
Yarmouth Fair
Sleep
'Roister Doister
PETER WARLOCK (born 1894), one of the best-known of our younger composers, is also, under his real name of Philip Hescltine , familiar to us as a musical author and journalist.
Warlock is a great enthusiast for old English literature and music, and witness to this is borne by his very first songs, which are settings of old English poems. Two of these head this evening's programme.
The first is lively praise of a maiden who is
' the fairest as ever I saw.'
The second is of a very different type-plaintive, mysterious. ' The maidens came when I was in my mother's bower ... The bayley beareth the bell away. The lily, the rose I lay ... The robes they lay in fold.'
Yarmouth Fair is a typical old English song of a man meeting a girl on his way to the fair,
Sleep is a setting of a beautiful old poem by John Flotcher.
Roister Doister is one of a set of ' Peterisms.'