Three Shakespeare Songs Op 6 (1905)

Come away, come away, death

O Mistress mine

Blow, blow, thou winter wind

Unlike Purcell’s song for Pausanius, Quilter’s Three Shakespeare Songs Op 6 are not only the best of their kind but also the earliest. Between 1905 and 1951 he made eighteen Shakespeare settings (including two unpublished) but never found a more natural match between melody and verse and than he did here. The melodic line of Come away, come away, death (from Twelfth Night) seems entirely spontaneous and yet the expressive weight is always unerringly placed and perfectly in proportion. The exquisitely written piano part similarly applies the emphasis just where it is needed towards the end of the second stanza.

Regarded by many as Quilter’s masterpiece, O Mistress mine (from Twelfth Night again) has been criticised by others for the repetition of the first line at the end of the song, as though the composer were otherwise at a loss to know how to finish it. But, surely, what the final “where are you roaming?” tells us is that she chose not to “stay and hear.” If the strophic treatment of Blow, blow, thou winter wind (from As You Like It) suits the first stanza not quite as well as the second, that is a small defect in a setting that so accurately reflects the ambiguity of words which are neither bitter nor jolly but both at once.