Composers › Frank Bridge › Programme note
3 Songs
by Frank Bridge (1879–1941)
Day after day (1922)
Speak to me, my love! (1922)
Love went a-riding (1914)
Those who know Frank Bridge’s songs only by the most popular of them, like Go not, happy day and Love went a-riding, will be surprised by the intense chromaticism and metrical freedom of the thoughtful and yet passionate Day after day and Speak to me, my love! – two of the three Rabindranath Tagore settings composed shortly before he abandoned song altogether in the mid-1920s. Written a decade earlier, Love went a-riding, one of three Mary Coleridge settings, is more characteristic and, in its harmonic and rhythmic exuberance, irresistible.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Day after day.rtf”