Bur 3 Thirteen Songs of A E Housman

Contents:
1. Yonder see the morning blink (Last Poems, XI)
(3.3.1927)
2. When first my way to fair I took (Last Poems, XXXV)
(4.3.1927)
3. The Long Road (A Shropshire Lad, XXXVI)
(5.3.1927)
4. The Poplars (A Shropshire Lad, LII)
(13.3.1927)
5. The Soldiers (A Shropshire Lad, VII)
(25.3.1927)
6. Grenadier (Last Poems, V)
(27.3.1927)
7. Bredon Hill (A Shropshire Lad, XXII)
(28.3.1927)
8. The half moon westers low (Last Poems, XXVI)
(5.4.1927)
9. The sigh that heaves the grasses (Last Poems, XXVII)
(6.4.1927)
10. From far, from eve and morning (A Shropshire Lad, XXXII)
(9.4.1927)
11. Is my team ploughing (A Shropshire Lad, XXVII)
(10.4.1927)
12. The Culprit (Last Poems, XIV)
(17.4.1927)
13. The Oracles (Last Poems, XXV)
(20.4.1927)

Editor's Note

Four of Burrows’s thirteen settings of poems by A E Housman, (Yonder see the morning blink, The Culprit, Grenadier, The Oracles) have never previously been set by other composers as far as one can ascertain. Yonder see the morning blink and When first my way to fair I took, were published by Augener in 1928 and are presented here as the first two songs. None of the other eleven has previously been published. Burrows’s approach is simple and appropriate to the equivalent simplicity of Housman’s verse. Yet there is great subtlety here: the gradual growth and decay of the Sunday church bells in Bredon Hill; the ‘whistling in the wind’ of the doomed man in The Culprit; the march of the Eastern invaders in The Oracles; these are but three of many felicities in which Burrows musically reflects the images in Housman’s lines. On Sunday 6 October 1996, The half moon, The Soldiers, Bredon Hill, From far, from eve and morning, The Long Road, and The Oracles were performed in the festival of music ‘A Shropshire Lad in Music’ in Spadesbourne Hall, Bromsgrove by William Dazeley (bass-baritone) and Iain Burnside (piano). The BBC later broadcast part of this programme on Radio 3. Bredon Hill and The Oracles are available in a performance by Dennis Sheppard, tenor, and the editor on the British Music Society MC BMS 403 from the British Music Society, 7 Tudor Gardens, Upminster, Essex RM14 3DE.