A Cycle of Songs
Words by A. E. Housman
Music by ARTHUR SOMERVELL
Sung by CUTHBERT REAVELY (baritone) i. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now 2. When I was one-and-twenty
3. There pass the careless people 4. In Summer-time on Bredon
5. The street sounds to the soldiers' tread
6. On the idle hill of Summer
7. White in the moon the long road lies
8. Think no more, lad, laugh, be jolly 9. Into my heart an air that kills
10. The lads in their hundreds
IT IS REMARKABLE how a slim volume of sixty-three short poems should so have dominated the lyrical side of modern British song-writing as has A. E. Housman 's ' A Shropshire Lad '. This collection was first published in 1896, and attracted immediate attention, not only from a reading public, to whom these rather mordant studies in raw emotion strongly appealed, but from a number of young musicians who saw in them the stuff of which the ballads of the people have always been made, new ballads that cried out to be set to music. New generations of composers have been setting them ever since that and will continue to set them for a long time yet.
Captain Reavely, who sings the cycle tonight, is the owner of Kinnersley Castle, in the neighbouring county of Hereford. He was the only regular officer to take a leading part in the International Season of Opera at Covent Garden.