Mentor and Muse explores and celebrates the relationship between Ralph Vaughan Williams and women in his musical life. We hear music written by Vaughan Williams himself and by two people who began as his students at the Royal College of Music and remained as his friends: Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams. His frequent letters addressed them as ‘Dearest Betty’ and ‘Dearest Grace’ respectively and they always spoke of him as ‘Uncle Ralph’, respecting his generosity of time and spirit.

The nine songs by Vaughan Williams include his settings of Four Poems by Fredegond Shove (1925), including the lastingly popular The Water Mill. We also hear Four Last Songs, on poems by Ursula. One more song, The Sky Above the Roof, was written for Mabel Dearmer, setting her translation of a poem by Verlaine. There are seven songs by Elizabeth Maconchy, whose career was followed particularly closely by the older composer; the earliest of them was written when she was just seventeen, a promising student.

The major first recording on the album is Billows of the Sea - a recently published cycle of four songs by the Welsh composer, Grace Williams. Grace not only stayed in close touch with her old teacher but also became a close friend of Elizabeth Maconchy, and the published correspondence between Betty and Grace makes fascinating reading. The song cycle was commissioned in 1969 by the Guild for Promotion of Welsh Music. Despite that, much of the poetry in the cycle and in the one additional song by Williams has a Scottish, rather than a Welsh flavour.