The blue remembered hills

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

For the final session of this term we return, almost, to where we set out: English song.
The poetry of A E Housman’s A Shropshire Lad was very much in vogue with composers during the early 20th century. In preparation for the Crwth concert on Saturday, we’ll look at George Butterworth’s settings of the poems (concentrating mainly on his cycle of six songs entitled A Shropshire Lad), and – where both composers have set the same texts – compare them with Vaughan-Williams’ Housman cycle, On Wenlock Edge.

The photograph shows the Long Mynd, Shropshire.

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