4 Shakespeare Songs (1949)

It was a lover

Take o take

Under the Greenwood Tree

Blow, blow, thou Winter wind

In setting Shakespearian texts dear to generations of British composers, Madeleine Dring - theatre composer, singer and actress - must have known what a weight of tradition she was taking on. Her Seven Shakespeare Songs are, however, entirely fresh and at the same time uninhibited in their response to the words. It was a lover, its flexible construction held together by the opening four notes, shows no sign of Morley, Warlock or Finzi precedent, while Take o Take goes its own, strictly personal harmonic way in the middle section. As a pianist herself, she wrote entertaining and imaginative piano parts, like the one that dances and buzzes alongside the liberated vocal line of Under the greenwood tree and the one that periodically projects swirling gusts of chromatic figuration in Blow, blow thou Winter wind.