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Songs Of A Wayfarer
''Songs of a Wayfarer'' is a song cycle for baritone and piano composed by John Ireland (18791962) between 1903 and 1911, and published in 1912. It consists of settings of five poems by various poets. A performance takes about 12 minutes. The songs are: # "Memory" (William Blake (17571827); "Memory, hither come", from ''Poetical Sketches'' (1783)) # "When Daffodils Begin to Peer" (William Shakespeare (15641616); from ''A Winter's Tale'', Act IV, Scene 3) # "English May" (Dante Gabriel Rossetti (182882); from ''The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti'', Vol. I (1886)) # "I Was Not Sorrowful" (Ernest Dowson (18671900); "Spleen", from ''Verses'' (1896)) # "I Will Walk on the Earth" (James Vila Blake (18421925)) In 1919, Edwin Evans described the cycle as being "of unequal merit but containing at least one song worthy to rank with its successors". In 2007, Richard Nicholson in a review of the recording by Benjamin Luxon (baritone) and Alan Rowlands Alan Rowlands (1 Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song Cycle
A song cycle (german: Liederkreis or Liederzyklus) is a group, or cycle (music), cycle, of individually complete Art song, songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a unit.Susan Youens, ''Grove online'' The songs are either for solo voice or an ensemble, or rarely a combination of solo songs mingled with choral pieces. The number of songs in a song cycle may be as brief as two songs or as long as 30 or more songs. The term "song cycle" did not enter lexicography until 1865, in Arrey von Dommer's edition of ''Koch’s Musikalisches Lexikon'', but works definable in retrospect as song cycles existed long before then. One of the earliest examples may be the set of seven Cantiga de amigo, Cantigas de amigo by the 13th-century Galicians, Galician jongleur Martin Codax. Jeffrey Mark identified the group of dialect songs 'Hodge und Malkyn' from Thomas Ravenscroft's ''The Briefe Discourse'' (1614) as the first of a number of early 17th Century examples in England. A song cycle is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Ireland (composer)
John Nicholson Ireland (13 August 187912 June 1962) was an English composer and teacher of music. The majority of his output consists of piano miniatures and of songs with piano. His best-known works include the short instrumental or orchestral work " The Holy Boy", a setting of the poem " Sea-Fever" by John Masefield, a formerly much-played Piano Concerto, the hymn tune Love Unknown and the choral motet "Greater Love Hath No Man". Life John Ireland was born in Bowdon, near Altrincham, Cheshire, into a family of English and Scottish descent and some cultural distinction. His father, Alexander Ireland, a publisher and newspaper proprietor, was aged 69 at John's birth. John was the youngest of the five children from Alexander's second marriage (his first wife had died). His mother, Annie Elizabeth Nicholson Ireland, was a biographer and 30 years younger than Alexander. She died in October 1893, when John was 14, and Alexander died the following year, when John was 15. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his " prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poetical Sketches
''Poetical Sketches'' is the first collection of poetry and prose by William Blake, written between 1769 and 1777. Forty copies were printed in 1783 with the help of Blake's friends, the artist John Flaxman and the Reverend Anthony Stephen Mathew, at the request of his wife Harriet Mathew. The book was never published for the public, with copies instead given as gifts to friends of the author and other interested parties. Of the forty copies, fourteen were accounted for at the time of Geoffrey Keynes' census in 1921. A further eight copies had been discovered by the time of Keynes' ''The Complete Writings of William Blake'' in 1957.Keynes (1966: 883) In March 2011, a previously unrecorded copy was sold at auction in London for £72,000. Publication The original 1783 copies were seventy-two pages in length, printed in octavo by John Flaxman's aunt, who owned a small print shop in the Strand, and paid for by Anthony Stephen Mathew and his wife Harriet, dilettantes to whom Blake h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the " Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Winter's Tale
''The Winter's Tale'' is a play by William Shakespeare originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, many modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics consider it to be one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" because the first three acts are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comic and supply a happy ending. The play has been intermittently popular, revived in productions in various forms and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespearean performance history, beginning after a long interval with David Garrick in his adaptation ''Florizel and Perdita'' (first performed in 1753 and published in 1756). ''The Winter's Tale'' was revived again in the 19th century, when the fourth "pastoral" act was widely popular. In the second half of the 20th century, ''The Winter's Tale'' in its entirety, and drawn largely from the First Folio t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement. Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats and William Blake. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence, ''The House of Life''. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from '' The Girlhood of Mary Virgin'' (1849) and ''Astarte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Dowson
Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 186723 February 1900) was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement. Biography Ernest Dowson was born in Lee, then in Kent, in 1867. His great-uncle was Alfred Domett, a Prime Minister of New Zealand. Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left in March 1888 without obtaining a degree. In November 1888 Dowson started work at Dowson & Son, his father's dry-docking business in Limehouse, East London. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, visiting music halls, and taking the performers to dinner. Dowson was a member of the Rhymers' Club, and a contributor to literary magazines such as ''The Yellow Book'' and '' The Savoy''. He collaborated with Arthur Moore on two unsuccessful novels, worked on a novel of his own, ''Madame de Viole'', and wrote reviews for ''The Critic''. Later in his career Dowson became a translator of French fiction, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Vila Blake
James Vila Blake (18421925) was an American Unitarian minister, essayist, playwright and hymn writer and poet. Blake was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 21, 1842. He graduated from Harvard College in 1862, and from Harvard Divinity School in 1866. He served as pastor in several Unitarian churches in Massachusetts and Illinois. He died in Chicago on April 28, 1925. Different sources give different, and inconsistent, dates for his pastorates: * 18681871 - Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston * 187784 - Quincy, Illinois * 187796 - Quincy, Illinois * 188397 - Third Unitarian Church, Chicago * 18921916 - Evanston, Illinois It is certain, however, that he was in Chicago on October 25, 1896. According to a contemporary report, he exhibited cool presence of mind when a serious fire broke out during a service. He was the last to leave the building, which by that time was full of smoke. Seconds later, it burst into flames and was consumed. He published many essays on r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin Evans (music Critic)
Edwin Evans (1 September 18743 March 1945)Grove, 1980 was an English music critic. Evans was born in London. His father, of the same name, was a writer on music and an organist. Edwin's early education was at Lille from the age of nine until eleven, then at Echternach in Luxembourg for another four years. On returning to England, he successively worked in cable telegraphy, the stock exchange and banking, and financial journalism. Then in 1901 he started his career in music criticism, first writing on French music, championing the music of Claude Debussy in particular but also of Henri Duparc, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré and Maurice Ravel. He went on to champion Russian composers, notably those associated with Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and British composers: in 1919–20 he wrote a series of articles on British composers for ''The Musical Times''.Obituary''The Musical Times'' Vol. 86, No. 1226(April 1945), pp. 105-108 He was music critic of the ''Pall Mall Gazette'' (1912â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Luxon
Benjamin Matthew Luxon (born 24 March 1937, Redruth, Cornwall) is a retired British baritone. Biography He studied with Walther Gruner at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (while working part-time as a PE teacher in the East End) and established an international reputation as a singer at the age of 21 when he won the third prize at the 1961 ARD International Music Competition in Munich. Soon afterward he joined composer Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group. On their tour of the Soviet Union in 1963, he sang the roles of Sid and Tarquinius in Britten's operas ''Albert Herring'' and ''The Rape of Lucretia'', respectively. In 1971, Britten composed the title role of his television opera ''Owen Wingrave'' specifically for Luxon's voice; Luxon created the role later that year with the English Opera Group. The following year, 1972, Luxon made his d̩but at both the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Рcreating the role of the Jester in Peter Maxwell Davies' opera '' Tav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Rowlands
Alan Rowlands (1 March 1929 – 2 January 2012) was an English pianist (though born in Swansea, Wales) who made notable contributions to British musical life both as a teacher and as a performer. He obtained a degree in chemistry at Jesus College, Oxford, before winning a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Music (RCM) under Angus Morrison. A particular preoccupation of his was the oeuvre of John Ireland. He studied much of Ireland's piano output with the composer himself, who recommended him to undertake a recording of the complete Ireland piano music. Rowlands completed the manuscript of Ireland's ''Ballade of London Nights ''Ballade of London Nights'' is a solo piano work composed in 1930 by John Ireland but not finished. The manuscript was completed after his death by Alan Rowlands, who first performed it on 6 June 1965. Rowlands advocated repeating the opening ...'', a piano piece composed in 1930. Rowlands first performed it on 6 June 1965. For much of h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
