In this fifth volume of Warlock’s Choral works, a set of three songs on poetry of Hilaire Belloc have been arranged for Chorus SATB and Piano, as well as The Birds, a fourth setting of Belloc, originally written as a unison song for boys’ Voices. The Rich Cavalcade and The Spring of the Year were written and published in Warlock’s lifetime. Written in his maturity, these songs show Warlock’s idiosyncratic Voice, influenced by Elizabethan and folk music, Delius, and the music of his time.Composer, writer and musical scholar Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) was active in the early decades of the twentieth century, when he distinguished himself by his rediscovery and transcriptionof early English music, his writing on Delius, Gesualdo and other many other musicians, and for his Choral works and songs, among them the carol Bethlehem Down.
