Songs before Sleep (2002)

The Mouse and the Bumblebee

Wee Willie Winkie

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

Baby, baby, naughty boy

As I walked by myself

There was an old woman

The latest work in this birthday programme, Songs before Sleep, is a virtuoso composition in every respect - a virtuoso display of wit and imagination from a composer at the height of his powers and a virtuoso test of the technique and powers of interpretation of both the singer and the pianist. Commissioned jointly by BBC Radio and the RPS as part of the New Generation Artists scheme, it was written specifically for Jonathan Lemalu, who gave the first performance with Michael Hampton at the Spitalfields Festival in 2003.

The fact that the six songs are all based on nursery rhymes does not mean that the cycle is a succession of trivialities. For one thing, the texts are longer than the jingles many of us were brought up with - they are all taken, at the suggestion of the composer’s sister, Meg Peacocke, from the authoritative Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes - and, for another thing, they are set with as much art as would be applied to any serious example of poetry for grown-ups. The Mouse and the Bumblee is a torrent of fiddle and bagpipe sounds driven in a galloping compound metre at an unstoppable molto vivo tempo - which proves to be particularly alarming to the mouse and the bumblebee when the cat’s purring is heard rumbling in the lower half of the keyboard. The full version of Wee Willie Winkie provides the material for a song as varied in expression as an operatic scena, touching on contrasts as extreme as the naughtily noisy middle section and the adoringly affectionate ending. Twinkle, twinkle, little star is another rhyme rarely encountered in full. Bennett’s contemplative setting is held together partly by allusions to the traditional melodic associations of the words and partly by the harmonies that twinkle down from the upper register of the piano in the opening and closing bars and at several points in between.

The parenting skills demonstrated in Baby, baby, naughty boy leave something to be desired by present standards, as the grotesquely exaggerated setting so wittily acknowledges. The philosophy behind As I walked by myself, on the other hand, is by no means out of date even though there is nothing overtly cynical in the vocal line so melodiously drawn against the gently paced crotchets in the piano part. There was an old woman is shaped like a vigorous scherzo with an expressive middle section and, drawing on earlier material, a brilliant coda.