Four Medieval Lyrics & Two Songs
Songs for high voice and pianoforte.
14th to 16th Century poetry set to music
These songs were a student work written in the 1950s’ with a harp accompaniment, and were then lost in a house fire. They were re-written from memory during 2005, and two songs with words taken from the sonnet ‘My Lute Awake” by Sir Thomas Wyatt were added in 2015. These songs can be sung by a baritone or mezzo-soprano.
“My Lute Awake” is meant to be performed at the begining of a programme, and “Now Cease My Lute” at the conclusion. The only exception is for performances of “Doomed Youth” and “Goodbye to the Battlefields”.
The Irish Dancer
14th - 15th Century
Found on a scrap of vellum and thought to date from the early 14th Century, this may be a fragment of a larger poem, or a complete lyric. An adaptation was used by W. B Yeats in his poem “Words for Music Perhaps“.
The Wood so Wild
15th Century
This verse was a favourite from approximately the middle of the 15th Century and onward. It was mentioned in “The Life of Peter Carew” as one of the songs he would sing with Henry VIII.
My Lute Awake
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Wyatt was a poet and diplomat and is generally credited with introducing the sonnet forminto English literature. Wyatt was unhappily married and having been rejected by Mary Shelton, it is possible that this poem was one of several he wrote in the aftermath.
The Falcon
15th - 16th Century
A late medieval ballad sometimes known as “The Corpus Christi Carol”, the falcon is seen to carry away a Knight, perhaps the love interest of the writer.
Maiden in the Moor
14th Century
This enigmatic Middle English poem tells the story of a mysterious “maiden” who dwells in the wilderness. Some interpetations take a Christian perspective, the maiden as representative of the Virgin Mary, while others take a folklaw approach with the maiden as a fairy. Moor-maidens are common in folk tales and legends where they appear at festivals and dances to enchant young men only to fade into the darkness.
Now Cease My Lute
Sir Thomas Wyatt
The lyrics for this song are taken from the last verse of “My Lute Awake”. While the poem begins with the optimism of new love, and although it ends with almost identical text the tone is of despair.
