The Penguin Book of English Song Read online

  Which from our pretty Lambes we pull,

  Fayre lined slippers for the cold:

  With buckles of the purest gold.

  A belt of straw and Ivie buds

  With Corall clasps and Amber studs,

  And if these pleasures may thee move,

  Come live with mee, and be my love.

  The Sheepheards Swaines shall daunce & sing,

  For thy delight each May-morning,

  If these delights thy minde may move,

  Then live with mee, and be my love.

  (Corkine, Moeran, O’Neill, Walton)

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  (1564–1616)

  Many were the wit-combates betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Johnson [sic], which two I behold like a Spanish great Gallion, and an English man of War; Master Johnson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear with the English-man of War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his Wit and Invention.

  THOMAS FULLER: The History of the Worthies of England (1662)

  We know very little about Shakespeare. There is a rather formal portrait of him by Martin Droeshout printed in the First Folio; a much more revealing one, attributed to John Taylor, depicting him with an earring; and a plaster cast after Gerard Johnson’s marble effigy in Holy Trinity Church at Stratford-on-Avon, showing the playwright as a plump bourgeois. The son of a glover, he married, aged eighteen, a local woman called Anne Hathwey or Hathaway, eight years his senior, who bore him three children: Susanna in 1583, and the twins Hamnet and Judith in 1585. His first published works were poems, not plays; from 1594 he was an actor and shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a troupe which in 1603 became the King’s Men – a sign of their increasing success. Their headquarters was the Globe in Southwark, built in 1599. They also performed at a private theatre in Blackfriars that was leased by Richard Burbage, a leading Shakespearian actor. In 1604 Shakespeare was living with a Huguenot family in London, but he was also active in Stratford, where he had bought New Place, an impressive house, in 1597. He began writing for the stage in the late 1580s, and half of his plays appeared in print during his lifetime. He probably retired to Stratford in about 1612. Tradition has it that he died in the company of Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton, and according to the Revd John Ward, Vicar of Stratford (c.1662), ‘Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting, and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.’ Shakespeare, however, was usually abstemious, and it seems more likely that he died of typhoid fever, which was prevalent in the area during 1616. The First Folio (Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies) appeared in 1623, seven years after his death.

  W. H. Auden, in an essay titled ‘Music in Shakespeare’ from The Dyer’s Hand (Faber and Faber, 1948), distinguishes two kinds of songs in Shakespeare’s plays, the ‘called-for’ and the ‘impromptu’, which, he writes, serve different dramatic purposes:

  A called-for song is a song which is sung by one character at the request of another who wishes to hear music, so that action and speech are halted until the song is over. Nobody is asked to sing unless it is believed that he can sing well and, little as we may know about the music which was actually used in performances of Shakespeare, we may safely assume from the contemporary songs that we do possess that they must have made demands which only a good voice and a good musician could satisfy. […]

  The impromptu singer stops speaking and breaks into song, not because anyone else has asked him to sing or is listening, but to relieve his feelings in a way that speech cannot do or to help him in some action. An impromptu song is not art but a form of personal behaviour. It reveals, as the called-for song cannot, something about the singer. On the stage, therefore, it is generally desirable that a character who breaks into impromptu song should not have a good voice. No producer, for example, would seek to engage Madame Callas for the part of Ophelia, because the beauty of her voice would distract the audience’s attention from the real dramatic point which is that Ophelia’s songs are to the highest degree not called-for. We are meant to be horrified both by what she sings and by the fact that she sings at all. The other characters are affected but not in the way that people are affected by music.

  The play texts printed here are those of the First Folio (1623), compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell. They explain in their Introduction that they got rid of all the bad versions (the ‘diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious impostors’) and restored the plays to their ‘True Originall’ condition, using prompt books, foul papers (the term used for rough drafts) in Shakespeare’s hand and fair copies. Although posterity owes Heminges and Condell a huge debt, the First Folio has a number of misprints and typographical idiosyncrasies – which have been retained in The Penguin Book of English Song. The titles of the poems were supplied by the composers.

  THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (?1592–3)

  ACT IV, SC. II

  GERALD FINZI: from Let Us Garlands Bring, Op. 18, for baritone and piano or strings (1942)

  Who is Silvia?

  Who is Siluia? what is she?

  That all our Swaines commend her?

  Holy, faire, and wise is she,

  The heauen such grace did lend her,

  that she might admired be.

  Is she kinde as she is faire?

  For beauty liues with kindnesse:1

  Loue doth to her eyes repaire,

  To helpe him of his blindnesse:

  And being help’d, inhabits there.

  Then to Siluia, let vs sing,

  That Siluia is excelling;

  She excels each mortall thing

  Vpon the dull earth dwelling.

  To her let vs Garlands bring.

  (Castelnuovo-Tedesco, German, Horder, Lehmann, Quilter, Rubbra, Schubert)

  LOVES LABOUR’S LOST (C.1595)

  ACT V, SC. II

  E. J. MOERAN: from Four Shakespeare Songs (1940)

  When daisies pied (1940)

  Spring

  When Dasies pied, and Violets blew,

  And Cuckow-buds1 of yellow hew:

  And Ladie-smockes2 all siluer white,

  Do paint the Medowes with delight

  The Cuckow then on euerie tree,

  Mockes married men, for thus sings he,

  Cuckow.

  Cuckow, Cuckow: O word of feare,

  Vnpleasing to a married eare.

  When Shepheards pipe on Oaten strawes,

  And merrie Larkes are Ploughmens clockes:3

  When Turtles tread4, and Rookes and Dawes,

  And Maidens bleach their summer smockes:

  The Cuckow then on euerie tree

  Mockes married men; for thus sings he,

  Cuckow.

  Cuckow, Cuckow: O word of feare,

  Vnpleasing to a married eare.

  (Arne, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dring, Finzi, Fortner, Füßl, Gurney, Horder, Jeffreys, Rawsthorne, Stravinsky, Taubert, Vaughan Williams, Warlock)

  When icicles hang by the wall (1940)

  Winter

  When Isicles hang by the wall,

  And Dicke the Sphepheard blowes his naile;1

  And Tom beares Logges into the hall,

  And Milke comes frozen home in paile:

  When blood is nipt, and waies be fowle,

  Then nightly sings the staring Owle

  Tu-whit to-who.

  A merrie note,

  While greasie Ione doth keele2 the pot.

  When all aloud the winde doth blow,

  And coffing drownes the Parsons saw:3

  And birds sit brooding in the snow,

  And Marrians nose lookes red and raw:

  When roasted Crabs4 hisse in the bowle,

  Then nightly sings the staring Owle,

  Tu-whit to who:

  A merrie note, />
  While greasie Ione doth keele the pot.

  (Argento, Arne, Blake, Brian, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dankworth, Finzi, Fortner, Füßl, Gardiner, Gibbs, Gurney, Keel, Lehmann, Marzials, Parry, Quilter, Rutter, Sviridov, Taubert, Vaughan Williams)

  THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (1596–8)

  ACT III, SC. II

  FRANCIS POULENC

  Fancy (1959)1

  Tell me where is fancie2 bred,

  Or in the heart, or in the head:

  How begot, how nourished. Replie, replie.

  It is engendred in the eyes,

  With gazing fed, and Fancie dies,

  In the cradle where it lies:

  Let vs all ring Fancies knell.

  Ile begin it.

  Ding dong, bell.

  All. Ding, dong, bell.

  (Arne, Brian, Britten, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coates, Gardner, Heise, Kodály, Lehmann, O’Neill, Quilter, Rutter, Taubert, Walton, Warlock, Weber)

  MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (?1598–9)

  ACT II, SC. III

  PETER WARLOCK

  Sigh no more, ladies (1927/1928)

  Balthasar

  Sigh no more Ladies, sigh no more,

  Men were deceiuers euer,

  One foote in Sea, and one on shore,

  To one thing constant neuer,

  Then sigh not so, but let them goe,

  And be you blithe and bonnie,

  Conuerting all your sounds of woe,

  Into hey nony nony.

  Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,

  Of dumps so dull and heauy,

  The fraud of men were euer so,

  Since summer first was leauy,

  Then sigh not so, but let them goe,

  And be you blithe and bonnie,

  Conuerting all your sounds of woe,

  Into hey nony nony.

  (Arne, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coates, Heise, Jeffreys, Keel, Korngold, Lehmann, Mathias, Moeran, Quilter, Plumstead, C. Scott, Vaughan Williams)

  AS YOU LIKE IT (?1599)

  ACT II, SC. V

  IVOR GURNEY: from Five Elizabethan Songs (1920)

  Under the greenwood tree (1913–14)

  Vnder the greene wood tree,

  who loues to lye with mee,

  And turne1 his merrie Note,

  vnto the sweet Birds throte:

  Come hither, come hither, come hither:

  Heere shall he see no enemie,

  But Winter and rough Weather.

  (Arne, Horder, Howells, Parry, Quilter, C. Scott, Walton)

  ACT II, SC. VII

  ROGER QUILTER: from Three Shakespeare Songs, Op. 6 (1905/1905)

  Blow, blow, thou winter wind

  Amiens

  Blow, blow, thou winter winde,

  Thou art not so vnkinde1, as mans ingratitude

  Thy tooth is not so keene, because thou art not seene,

  although thy breath be rude.

  Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, vnto the greene holly2,

  Most frendship, is fayning; most Louing, meere folly:

  The heigh ho, the holly,

  This Life is most iolly.

  Freize, freize, thou bitter skie that dost not bight so nigh

  as benefitts forgot:

  Though thou the waters warpe3, thy sting is not so sharpe,

  as freind remembred not.

  Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, vnto the greene holly,

  Most frendship is fayning; most Louing, meere folly:

  The heigh ho, the holly,

  This Life is most iolly.

  (Arne, Blake, Brian, Bridge, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dring, Finzi, Fortner, Gibbs, Gurney, Heise, Horder, Killmayer, Korngold, Marzials, Mathias, Nicolai, Parry, Rawsthorne, Rutter, Somervell, Stenhammar, Sullivan, Sviridov)

  ACT V. SC. III

  PETER WARLOCK

  Pretty ring time (1925/1926)

  It was a Louer, and his lasse,

  With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

  That o’re the greene corne feild did passe,

  In the spring time, the onely pretty rang time1,

  When Birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.

  Sweet Louers loue the spring.

  Betweene the acres2 of the Rie,

  With a hey, and a ho, & a hey nonino:

  These prettie Country folks would lie,

  In spring time, the onely pretty rang time,

  When Birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.

  Sweet Louers loue the spring.

  And therefore take the present time,

  With a hey, & a ho, and a hey nonino,

  For loue is crowned with the prime3,

  In spring time, the onely pretty rang time,

  When Birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.

  Sweet Louers loue the spring.

  (Bax, Berger, Brian, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Coates, Delius, Dring, Dunhill, Finzi, German, Heise, Jeffreys, Korngold, Lehmann, Marzials, Moeran, Morley, O’Neill, Parry, Quilter, Rubbra, Rutter, Schulz, Taubert, Vaughan Williams)

  HAMLET (?1599–1601)

  ACT IV, SC. V

  RICHARD STRAUSS: Drei Lieder der Ophelia aus ‘Hamlet’ Op. 67, 1–3, translated by Karl Simrock (1918)

  Ophelia’s madness is triggered by the death of her father, Polonius (accidentally killed by Hamlet), and by Hamlet’s brutal behaviour towards her. When his mother, Queen Gertrude, marries Claudius a mere two months after the latter’s murder of her husband (his own brother and Hamlet’s father), Hamlet is torn between his love for Ophelia and the repugnance he now feels for all women. Whenever he encounters Ophelia, he uses language that is drenched in sexual innuendo. Disinhibited in her grief, which slowly turns to madness, Ophelia begins to echo this lewd language.

  Strauss’s Drei Lieder der Ophelia have an intriguing history. When the publishing house of Bote & Bock agreed to publish his Op. 56, they inserted a clause in his contract which stipulated that they would hold the rights to his next group of songs. Such a clause was now anathema to Strauss, whose ambitions to protect the rights of German composers in matters of fees and royalties had led to the founding of a Society of German Composers and – subsequently – the founding of a rival society by Bote & Bock to protect their interests. Strauss’s refusal to write a group of songs for them meant that for twelve years after the publication of Op. 56 he composed no further Lieder – until in 1918 the Berlin publishers threatened him with legal action. Strauss’s response was to compose the scurrilous Krämerspiegel, a vitriolic attack on music publishers, which Bote & Bock refused to accept. To break the deadlock, Strauss dashed off his Op. 67, which comprised three mad-Ophelia songs and three bad-tempered songs from the ‘Book of Ill-Humour’ from Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan. Unlike Brahms’s Ophelia-Lieder, which were intended to be sung unaccompanied, Strauss’s are set to piano accompaniments that stress Ophelia’s insanity: the little wandering motif and dissonances of ‘Wie erkenn’ ich mein Treulieb’, the bizarre flapping syncopations of ‘Guten Morgen, ’s ist Sankt Valentinstag’, and in ‘Sie trugen ihn auf der Bahre bloß’ the abrupt shifts in tempi.

  1

  How should I your true loue know from another one?

  By his Cockle hat and staffe,1 and his Sandal shoone.

  He is dead and gone Lady, he is dead and gone,

  At his head a grasse-greene Turfe, at his heeles a stone.

  White his Shrow’d as the Mountaine Snow.

  Larded2 with sweet flowers:

  Which bewept to the graue did not go,

  With true-loue showres.

  (Borg, Brahms, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chausson, Lassen, Maconchy, Quilter, Reutter, White)

  2

  Tomorrow is S. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,

  And I a Maid at your Window, to be your Valentine.

  Then vp he rose, & don’d his clothes, & dupt1 the chamber dore,

  Let in the Maid, that out a Maid, neuer departed more.

  By gis2, and by S. Charity,

  Alacke, and fie for sh
ame:

  Yong men wil doo’t, if they come too’t,

  By Cocke3 they are too blame.

  Quoth she before you tumbled me,

  You promis’d me to Wed:

  So would I ha done by yonder Sunne,

  And thou hadst not come to my bed.

  (Borg, Brahms, Reutter)

  3

  They bore him bare fac’d on the Beer,

  Hey non nony, nony, hey nony:

  And on his graue raines many a teare,

  Fare you well my Doue.

  For bonny sweet Robin is all my ioy.

  And will he not come againe,

  And will he not come againe:

  No, no, he is dead, go to thy Death-bed,

  He neuer wil come againe.

  His Beard as white as Snow,

  All Flaxen was his Pole1:

  He is gone, he is gone, and we cast away mone,

  Gramercy on his Soule.

  (Borg, Brahms, Lassen, Rawsthorne, Reutter)

  TWELFTH NIGHT (?1601)

  ACT II, SC. IV

  JOSEPH HAYDN: from VI Original Canzonettas – Second Set (1795)

  She never told her love

  Duke

  [And what’s her history?]

  Viola

  [A blanke my Lord:] she neuer told her loue,

  But let concealment like a worme i’th budde

  Feede on her damaske cheeke: [she pin’d in thought,

  And with a greene and yellow melancholly,]

  She sate like Patience1 on a Monument,

  Smiling at greefe.

  (Borg)

  ACT II, SC. III

  GERALD FINZI: from Let Us Garlands Bring (1942)

  O mistress mine (1942)1