''Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad'' is a

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 ...

for baritone and piano composed in 1911 by

George Butterworth George Sainton Kaye Butterworth, MC (12 July 18855 August 1916) 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''. Early ...

(18851916). It consists of settings of six poems from

A. E. Housman Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) 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 pub ...

's 1896 collection ''

A Shropshire Lad ''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 ...

''. Butterworth set another five poems from ''A Shropshire Lad'' in '' Bredon Hill and Other Songs'' (1912). Nine of the eleven songs were premiered at Oxford on 16 May 1911, by James Campbell McInnes (baritone) and the composer (piano). The following month, the six songs which make up the present cycle were performed in London, with McInnes as singer and

Hamilton Harty Sir Herbert Hamilton Harty (4 December 1879 – 19 February 1941) was an Irish composer, conductor, pianist and organist. After an early career as a church organist in his native Ireland, Harty moved to London at about age 20, soon becoming a w ...

as accompanist. A performance typically takes 14 minutes. The songs are as follows; the Roman numerals are from ''A Shropshire Lad'': # II "Loveliest of Trees" # XIII "

When I Was One-and-Twenty 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 referen ...

" # XV "Look Not In My eyes" # XLIX "Think No More, Lad" # XXIII "The Lads in Their Hundreds" # XXVII " Is My Team Ploughing?" According to the music historian A. V. Butcher, Butterworth "was intimately concerned with the collecting and editing of

folksongs Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has be ...

, and he found a traditional tune in the

Dorian mode Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different but interrelated subjects: one of the Ancient Greek ''harmoniai'' (characteristic melodic behaviour, or the scale structure associated with it); one of the medieval musical modes; or—mos ...

which could be happily wedded to 'When I was one-and-twenty'." No such tune has, however, been identified.

References

Song cycles by George Butterworth Classical song cycles in English 1911 compositions Musical settings of poems by A. E. Housman {{classical-composition-stub