On Wenlock Edge (for tenor, piano, và string quartet)

Vaughan Williams – On Wenlock Edge (1909), sung by Anthony Rolfe Johnson

This wonderful cycle of songs for tenor, piano, and string quartet (a setting of six poems by A. E. Housman, from the collection « A Shropshire Lad »), sung here by the late lamented English tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson [1940-2010], was completed by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1909, not long after he had taken in Paris a few lessons from Maurice Ravel. Hence occasional suggestions of the influence that the latter may have had on him when he composed this work.

The titles of the songs are:

1/ [00:00] On Wenlock Edge
2/ [03:43] From far, from eve and morning
3/ [05:38] Is my team ploughing?
4/ [09:40] Oh, when I was in love with you
5/ [10:22] Brendon Hill
6/ [18:05] Clun.