set to music by Arthur Somervell sung by Hervey Alan (bass)
Frederick Stone (accompanist)
I hate the dreadful hollow
A voice by the cedar tree
She came to the village church 0 let the solid ground
Birds in the High Hall garden Go not. happy day
I have led her home
Come into the garden. Maud The fault was mine Dead, long dead
O that 'twere possible
My life has crept so long
(Hervey Alan broadcasts by permission of the Governors of Sadler's Wells)
Sir Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), who for many years was chief inspector of music to the Board of Education, studied composition at Cambridge, at the Royal College of Music, and later in Germany. He wrote a number of large-scale works, many of them for festivals; but it is by his songs that he is best known today. They reveal a spontaneously lyrical gift and considerable dramatic power. His cycle of songs from Tennyson's Maud traces the tragic story from the point where the singer tells of the horror he feels for the ' dreadful hollow where his father's body was found. His love for Maud is given eloquent expression; after her death he sees her in a vision and is led to ' embrace (he purpose of God and the doom assigned.'
(Harold Rutland)
