Recording history
The original recording of eight tracks was made in 1969 and was released as the original vinyl album. Track one is a suite, "A song-story", lasting 28 minutes, 7 seconds and is the centrepiece of the album.
In 1976, a further six tracks were recorded with musicians mainly from the Albion Band and a new version of the album was released, with the original "A song-story" suite on one side and the new recordings on the other. This album was issued under the name Amaranth.
In 1993, a CD with all the tracks was issued. This whole album lasts 69:56.
Contrabass refers to several musical instruments of very low pitch—generally one octave below bass register instruments. While the term most commonly refers to the double bass, many other instruments in the contrabass register exist.
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on piano and portative organ created unique settings for Shirley's plain, austere singing style.
David John Munrow was a British musician and early music historian.
The City Waites is a British early music ensemble. Formed in the early 1970s, they specialise in English music of the 16th and 17th centuries from the street, tavern, theatre and countryside — the music of ordinary people. They endeavour to appeal to a wide general audience as well as to scholars. They have toured the UK, much of Europe, the Middle East, the Far East and the USA, performing everywhere from major concert halls and universities to village squares. Collaborations include the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare's Globe. They can be heard on several movie and TV soundtracks; they broadcast frequently and have made more than 30 CDs.
The Albion Band, also known as The Albion Country Band, The Albion Dance Band, and The Albion Christmas Band, were a British folk rock band, originally brought together and led by musician Ashley Hutchings. Generally considered one of the most important groupings in the genre, it has contained or been associated with a large proportion of major English folk performers in its long and fluid history.
No Roses is an album by Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band. It was recorded at Sound Techniques, and Air Studios in London, in the summer of 1971. It was produced by Sandy Roberton and Ashley Hutchings. It was released in October 1971 on the Pegasus label.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.
The Young Tradition were an English folk group of the 1960s, formed by Peter Bellamy, Royston Wood and Heather Wood. They recorded three albums of mainly traditional British folk music, sung in arrangements for their three unaccompanied voices.
The Gower Wassail is a wassail song from Gower in Wales, UK. Wassailing is a midwinter tradition wherein either orchards or households are blessed by guisers, which came to Wales through exposure to English custom. The song is printed in A.L. Lloyd's book Folk Song in England (1967), having been heard from Phil Tanner. Structurally, the song is in 6/8 time with bacchius trisyllables, a Balliol rhyme scheme, and the "ffal de radl" musical syllables characteristic of much of Welsh folk songs. Some of the lyrics closely resemble other popular wassailing songs, such as the 'Gloucestershire Wassail'
The Agincourt Carol is an English folk song written some time in the early 15th century. It recounts the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, in which the English army led by Henry V of England defeated that of the French Charles VI in what is now the Pas-de-Calais region of France.
Carols of All Seasons is a 1959 studio album by American folk singer Jean Ritchie.
Love, Death and the Lady is an album by Shirley and Dolly Collins.
The Early Music Consort of London was a British music ensemble in the late 1960s and 1970s which specialised in historically informed performance of Medieval and Renaissance music. It was founded in 1967 by music academics Christopher Hogwood and David Munrow and produced many highly influential recordings. The group disbanded in 1976 following Munrow's suicide.
The Holly Bears The Crown is an album by The Young Tradition with Shirley and Dolly Collins and other guest musicians. The trio "The Young Tradition" sang a cappella folk songs in a style similar to the Copper Family.
The Power of the True Love Knot is an album by Shirley Collins.
The Prospect Before Us is a British folk rock album, by The Albion Dance Band, which was released in 1977 on the EMI Harvest label.
Dorothy Ann Collins, was an English folk musician, arranger and composer. She was the older sister of Shirley Collins.
The Etchingham Steam Band were a folk group formed by Ashley Hutchings and Shirley Collins in England in 1974 after the Albion Country Band had disbanded in late 1973. They were named after village Etchingham in Sussex where Hutchings and Shirley Collins, his then wife, were living. The band's name was a reference to their acoustic nature, formed during a time of power cuts in the mid-1970s that caused problems for any band using electrical instruments or amplification.
Medieval folk rock, medieval rock or medieval folk is a musical subgenre that emerged in the early 1970s in England and Germany which combined elements of early music with rock music. It grew out of the British folk rock and progressive folk movements of the late 1960s. Despite the name, the term was used indiscriminately to categorise performers who incorporated elements of medieval, renaissance and baroque music into their work and sometimes to describe groups who used few, or no, electric instruments. This subgenre reached its height towards the middle of the 1970s when it achieved some mainstream success in Britain, but within a few years most groups had either disbanded, or were absorbed into the wider movements of progressive folk and progressive rock. Nevertheless, the genre had a considerable impact within progressive rock where early music, and medievalism in general, was a major influence and through that in the development of heavy metal. More recently medieval folk rock has revived in popularity along with other forms of medieval inspired music such as Dark Wave orientated neo-Medieval music and medieval metal.
Austin John Marshall was an English record producer, songwriter, poet and graphic artist, most notable for his work in developing folk music in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. Writer Karl Dallas described him as "one of the great unsung pioneers of contemporary British folk song".
