Fourteen-year-old William Walton composed three versions of his setting of Phineas Fletcher's poem Drop, Slow Tears and this version for treble voices is apparently the first . . . Some of the revoicing of chords necessiated by the smaller range creates luminous effects. For choirs able to navigate the tonal challenges, this may become the preferred setting

Walton was 14 when he wrote his first version of A Litany ('Drop, drop, slow tears') for upper voices, subsequently reworked twice for SATB. A comparison between these first thoughts and the published SATB version is fascinating: there were re-barrings that alter the position of stresses and several places in the later version where rests were removed or the duration of chords shortened to tighten the music. At the start, the first version has two extra falling-third 'drops'. But this upper-voice version still has the distinctive poignancy of the well-known SATB one, from those opening falling phrases, through the dramatic 'cry for vengeance' to the final, repeated 'my tears