Alfred Edward Housman was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by publishing as a private scholar at first. Later Housman was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. He is now acknowledged as one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars at any time. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his beauty. According to Tzetzes, he rejected all romantic advances, eventually falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life. After he died, in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.
George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC was an English composer who was best known for the orchestral idyll The Banks of Green Willow and his song settings of A. E. Housman's poems from A Shropshire Lad.
Ivor Bertie Gurney was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from manic depression through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. Critical evaluation of Gurney has been complicated by this, and also by the need to assess both his poetry and his music. Gurney himself thought of music as his true vocation: "The brighter visions brought music; the fainter verse".
A Shropshire Lad is a collection of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896. Selling slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance, and many parodists have satirised Housman's themes and poetic style.
Wenlock Edge is a limestone escarpment near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England and a site of special scientific interest because of its geology. It is over 19 mi (31 km) long, running southwest to northeast between Craven Arms and Much Wenlock, and is roughly 1,083 feet above sea level. The deciduous woodland which runs along it covers much of the steep slopes of the escarpment and in parts it is very well preserved.
Bredon Hill is a hill in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Evesham in the Vale of Evesham. The summit of the hill is in the parish of Kemerton, and it extends over parts of eight other parishes. The hill is geologically part of the Cotswolds and lies within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. However, it now stands isolated in the Vale of Evesham due to natural causes.
Last Poems (1922) was the last of the two volumes of poems which A. E. Housman published during his lifetime. Of the 42 poems there, seventeen were given titles, a greater proportion than in his previous collection, A Shropshire Lad (1896). Although it was not quite so popular with composers, the majority of the poems there have been set to music.
The Far Country is a novel by Nevil Shute, first published in 1952.
Hodie is a cantata by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Composed between 1953 and 1954, it is the composer's last major choral-orchestral composition, and was premiered under his baton at Worcester Cathedral, as part of the Three Choirs Festival, on 8 September 1954. The piece is dedicated to Herbert Howells. The cantata, in 16 movements, is scored for chorus, boys' choir, organ and orchestra, and features tenor, baritone, and soprano soloists.
"The Trees They Grow So High" is a British folk song. The song is known by many titles, including "The Trees They Do Grow High", "Daily Growing", "Long A-Growing" and "Lady Mary Ann".
Charles Wilfred Leslie Orr, generally known as C. W. Orr, was an English composer.
Ralph Vaughan Williams' Four Last Songs cycle is made up of four songs: "Procris", "Tired", "Hands, Eyes, and Heart", and "Menelaus". All of the songs were composed between 1954 and 1958. The cycle is best suited for mezzo-soprano, although, the original program note from the cycle's 1959 premiere acknowledges that all of the songs may be sung by a baritone, except for "Hands, Eyes, and Heart", "which is a woman's song." It is suggested that the four songs were originally intended to be two separate song cycles with "Menelaus" and "Procris" belonging to one cycle and "Tired" and "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" belonging to another. However, there is debate in the scholarly community about this proposed song cycle grouping. Renée Chérie Clark in her essay, "A Critical Appraisal of Four Last Songs" suggests, citing a letter from the composer to a friend at Cornell University, that Vaughan Williams actually intended for "Menelaus" and "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" to be grouped together. The composer's death in 1958 left both cycles unfinished, and in 1960, they were assembled by the composer's widow, Ursula Vaughan Williams, and published as set by Oxford University Press. The texts of all four songs are poems written by Vaughan Williams' wife Ursula who penned several books of poetry throughout her lifetime as well as a biography of her late husband. "Procris" and "Menelaus" deal with figures from ancient Greek and Roman mythology and epic poetry while "Tired" and "Hands, Eyes, and Heart" depict images of love between a husband and wife.
When I Was One-and-Twenty is the first line of the untitled Poem XIII from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896), but has often been anthologised and given musical settings under that title. The piece is simply worded but contains references to the now superseded coins guineas and crowns. It is the monologue of a young man of twenty-two who reflects on the truth of the advice given him a year before not to give his heart away in love. Writing to his publisher in December, 1920, Housman scornfully observed of an illustrated edition of the poem, “How like an artist to think that the speaker is a woman!” A heterosexual male reading could still be given the lament then because, at the time, Housman's homosexuality was unsuspected. Later the more likely interpretation of the poem's inspiration as referring to Housman's unrequited love for a fellow male student at university has gained currency.
"The Farmer's Boy" is a traditional English folk song or ballad, listed as number 408 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It has been arranged as a military march.
On Wenlock Edge is a song cycle composed in 1909 by Ralph Vaughan Williams for tenor, piano and string quartet. The cycle comprises settings of six poems from A. E. Housman's 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad. A typical performance lasts around 22 minutes. It was premiered by Gervase Elwes, Frederick Kiddle and the Schwiller Quartet on 15 November 1909 in the Aeolian Hall, London. It was later orchestrated by the composer in a version first performed on 24 January 1924. Subsequent editions show a measure excised from the final movement (Clun): the third measure from the end. The Boosey and Hawkes 1946 score notes indicates this in a footnote on the last page. The cycle was recorded by Elwes, Kiddle and the London String Quartet in 1917.
Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad is a song cycle for baritone and piano composed in 1911 by George Butterworth (1885–1916). It consists of settings of six poems from A. E. Housman's 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad.
The Land of Lost Content is a song cycle for voice and piano composed in 1920–21 by John Ireland (1879–1962). It consists of settings of six poems by A. E. Housman from his 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad.
After A. E. Housman’s death in 1936, his brother Laurence was made his literary executor and over the next two years published further selections of poems from his manuscripts: in 1936 More Poems and, between 1937-9, Additional Poems, although the latter were never printed as a separate edition. As much more of Housman's earlier writing was brought to light, its autobiographical nature clarified his suppressed homosexuality. There are also recognisable Classical influences.
The Lark in the Morning is an English folk song. It was moderately popular with traditional singers in England, less so in Scotland, Ireland and the United States. It starts as a hymn to the ploughboy's life, and often goes on to recount a sexual encounter between a ploughboy and a maiden resulting in pregnancy.
