Folksong Arrangements

Come you not from Newcastle? from Volume 3: British Isles (1948)

Early one morning from Volume 5: British Isles (1961)

The last rose of summer from Volume 4: Moore’s Irish Melodies (1948)

Little Sir William from Volume 1: British Isles (1943)

There’s none to soothe from Volume 3: British Isles (1948)

The brisk young widow from Volume 5: British Isles (1961)

Although he did not take a creative interest in folk material in the way that Vaughan Williams or Percy Grainger did, Britten made his own versions of more than seventy folk songs or near-folk songs. Most of them – for voice and piano but in some special cases with guitar or harp accompaniment – are to be found in the six volumes of Folk Song Arrangements published between 1943 and 1961. Just how authentic the tunes, which he drew from a variety of printed sources, was clearly a question of far less importance to him than it was to a serious folk-song collector like Bartók. But he surely agreed with his Hungarian colleague that arranging them for the concert hall – the vast majority were destined for his concerts with Peter Pears – was a process as delicate as “mounting a precious stone.”

Come you not from Newcastle? (from John Hullah’s Song Book) is a characteristic example in that it takes a prominent feature of the tune and bases the accompaniment on it – in this case a short-long-short rhythmic figure which appears with the same melodic intervals at the same pitch in every bar of the left hand part. The right hand makes sure that, in the second stanza at least, there is no lack of harmonic variety. Early one morning is treated in a similar way, the first phrase of the vocal line supplying the three-note motif that echoes in the right hand part in the first and fourth stanzas and is incorporated in the even-quaver counterpoint in the quicker middle section. Britten’s version of The last rose of summer – based on a song in Moore’s Irish Melodies which was originally published as The groves of Blarney in Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland – is far less modest. Beginning with dissonant arpeggiated harmonies, indulging the voice to the extent of a near-cadenza in the middle and dramatically quickening its stride towards the end, it is more demonstrative than many of Britten’s own songs.

Based on a song from Somerset, Little Sir William is a witty study in pathos which effectively offsets both the true pathos of the Scots There’s none to soothe (from Hullah’s Song Book) and the discomfort of the recklessly harmonised Brisk young widow from Chester.