Three Folksong Arrangements (2024)

These three songs for unaccompanied choir reflect themes of love and the inherent dangers affecting sailors. They follow a loose narrative beginning with a sailor’s courtship before joining the sailors on their journey back from Spain. The final song brings a tragic end to the earlier courtship.

1 The Crystal Spring

This beautiful song appeared originally in the collection Folk Songs From Somerset, compiled by Cecil Sharp in 1908, and later included in One Hundred English Folksongs. A farmer called William King, who lived in the village of East Harptree between Bristol and Wells, sang it to Sharp, alongside five other songs. It describes a captain courting his true love and promising to be constant to her. Narrated from the woman’s perspective, it is arranged here for sopranos, with a rich harmonic accompaniment in the lower voices.

2 Spanish Ladies

This is another song collected by Cecil Sharp in the early twentieth century. In his notes for the song, Sharp considered it ‘one of the grandest of our folk-tunes and one of which a seafaring nation may well be proud’. The song has its origins from the eighteenth (or possibly seventeenth) century, predating even the sea shanty work songs of merchant sailors, and may have emerged when the Royal Navy carried supplies to Spain to aid its resistance to revolutionary France. It describes the British naval seamen sailing north from Spain along the English Channel, but unable to determine their location. The melody, in the aeolian mode (using the natural minor scale), is the same for both verse and chorus. For the verses, in this arrangement, the melody is given to the lower voices.

3 The Drowned Lover

The final song describes a woman finding the body of her drowned sailor on the beach. In despair, she lies beside him and dies. The two lovers are buried together in the churchyard, in their ‘new married bed’. Over four verses, the melody of the song (in the dorian mode) is arranged with varied textures and harmonies to highlight the tragic narrative.

Three Folk Song Hymn Arrangements (2024)

The melodies from several traditional English folk songs are now more commonly associated with the religious texts of hymns and carols. A famous example of such is the carol O Little Town Of Bethlehem, which (in England) is sung to the tune ‘Forest Green’. This was the name of the village in which the composer Vaughan Williams adapted the folk ballad The Ploughboy’s Dream for the carol in the 1906 publication of The English Hymnal. This set of three hymn arrangements outline important parts of the Christian story, beginning with the birth of Jesus, followed by his teaching, and the last supper.

4 What Child Is This

What Child Is This? is a Christmas carol set to the melody of the 16th-century folk song Greensleeves, a ballad originally associated with themes of romantic longing. In 1865, William Chatterton Dix provided sacred lyrics that celebrate the nativity of Christ, focusing on the mystery of his birth and salvation. This union of Greensleeves’ haunting melody with reverent imagery has made the carol a timeless favourite during the Christmas season.

This arrangement, for eight-part a cappella choir, gives the tune to the altos and basses with the other parts providing a tapestry of interweaving suspensions. A modulation is provided into the final verse.

5 I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say

Like O Little Town Of Bethlehem, the hymn I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say uses a folksong, collected and arranged by Vaughan Williams for the 1906 publication of The English Hymnal. The tune, named ‘Kingsfold’, after the village he heard a version sung to him, was initially associated with a ballad called Dives and Lazarus. It was this version of the tune Vaughan Williams used for the hymn, pairing it with Horatius Bonar’s text. Its modal character and timeless beauty have made it a beloved hymn tune. Vaughan Williams would later use the melody in his orchestral work Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.

After a short introduction, this arrangement introduces the first verse in the basses before moving to the altos in the second verse with a richer harmonic accompaniment. The final verse provides a more climactic effect, with the tune now sung by the sopranos, to the words ‘I am the dark world’s light’.

6 An Upper Room

This is an arrangement of a more contemporary hymn, with words from 1973 by the Methodist minister Rev Fred Pratt Green. It is a reflective hymn recalling the Last Supper, where Jesus shared bread and wine with his disciples, and conveys themes of love, sacrifice, and humility. It uses the melody of an eighteenth century folk ballad, O Waly, Waly. This arrangement begins, after a brief introduction, with the tenors singing the first verse. The music then unfolds with a richer texture in the second verse, with the sopranos providing the melody. The third verse provides a change of key and hints of imitation between the vocal parts before ending in the final verse in a similar manner to the opening.

Songs From Three Counties (2015)

This cycle of five folksongs for choir and orchestra was commissioned by Haslemere Musical Society in 2015. The town of Haslemere, in the south of England, lies within the three counties of Hampshire, West Sussex and Surrey. To provide a local flavour, the song cycle uses only folksongs that were ‘collected’ within these three counties. They are arranged with only minor changes but presented as dramatically as possible, with respect to the harmony, orchestration and the structure of the songs, as well as considering the journey through the complete cycle. Although the songs themselves are cast in a simple strophic form (i.e. the melody repeats for each verse, like a hymn), various compositional structures are explored, including a passacaglia (or ground bass) in the third song, with its own separate theme.

The five songs form a narrative with a maritime theme, starting with All Things Are Quite Silent (collected in Lower Beeding, Sussex, 1904) in which a woman laments the loss of her lover who has been press-ganged into the navy. This is then followed by a description of the sailors’ departure on the ship, the bold Privateer (Broadwood collection, Sussex, 1843).

The centrepiece of the cycle, collected in 1912 in Haslemere, is the song The Royal Oak. In this song, the ship encounters the enemy, but is victorious in battle. The victory is short-lived, however, upon sighting The Mermaid, (Twyford, Hampshire, 1906) which was considered by sailors as an omen of impending doom. In the last song, The Ship in Distress (Watersfield, Sussex, 1907), the sailors start drifting far out at sea.

This album is due for release in June 2025, when it will be available from the online store at Convivium Records.