''Anon in Love'' is a cycle of six songs by

William Walton Sir William Turner Walton (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include ''Façade'', the cantat ...

, originally for

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

and guitar, setting anonymous poems from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The cycle was commissioned by the tenor

Peter Pears Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears ( ; 22 June 19103 April 1986) was an English tenor. His career was closely associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, his personal and professional partner for nearly forty years. Pears' musical career started ...

and the guitarist

Julian Bream Julian Alexander Bream (15 July 193314 August 2020) was an English classical guitarist and lutenist. Regarded as one of the most distinguished classical guitarists of the 20th century, he played a significant role in improving the public perc ...

and first performed at the

Aldeburgh Festival The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk and is centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall. History of the Aldeburgh Festi ...

in 1960. Walton later arranged the cycle for tenor and small orchestra. A version for voice and piano was made by the musicologist

Christopher Palmer Christopher Francis Palmer (9 September 194622 January 1995) was an English arranger, orchestrator, record producer and film score composer. He was also an author and lecturer, the biographer of composers, champion of lesser-known composers and c ...

and premiered after the composer's death. All three versions have been commercially recorded.

Background

For most of his career Walton had been chiefly associated with orchestral and choral music. His

juvenilia Juvenilia are literary, musical or artistic works produced by authors during their youth. Written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appear as retrospective publications, some time after the author has become well known for later works. Bac ...

included four songs setting words by

Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such as '' Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the Eleve ...

(1918) and he adapted three spoken numbers from ''

Façade A façade or facade (; ) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loanword from the French language, French (), which means "frontage" or "face". In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important asp ...

'' as songs for voice and piano (1932); his music for the 1936 film of ''

As You Like It ''As You Like It'' is a pastoral Shakespearean comedy, comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wil ...

'' included a setting of Amiens' song "Under the Greenwood Tree", and for a 1942

BBC radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927. The service provides national radio stations cove ...

play ''Christopher Columbus'' he set a lyric by

Louis MacNeice Frederick Louis MacNeice (12 September 1907 – 3 September 1963) was an Irish poet, playwright and producer for the BBC. Known for its exploration of introspection, empiricism, and belonging, his poetic work is now ranked among the twentieth ...

, but these were until 1960 his only solo songs from a professional career of four decades. In 1959 the tenor

and the guitarist

, who were giving joint recitals at that time, approached Walton to write a new set of songs for them. Pears was known among other things for his performances of the English

lute song The term lute song is given to a music style from the late 16th century to early 17th century, late Renaissance music, Renaissance to early Baroque music, Baroque, that was predominantly in England and France. Lute songs were generally in stroph ...

repertory of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and for his appearances in the operas of his life partner

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, o ...

.Burn, Andrew. Notes to Hyperion CD CDA 67340 (2002) He suggested to Walton that the new work could have the character of "a one-man opera". The idea appealed to Walton, who turned to

Christopher Hassall Christopher Vernon Hassall (24 March 1912 – 25 April 1963) was an English actor, dramatist, librettist, lyricist and poet, who found his greatest fame in a memorable musical partnership with the actor and composer Ivor Novello after worki ...

, his librettist for his one full-length opera ''

Troilus and Cressida ''The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida'', often shortened to ''Troilus and Cressida'' ( or ), is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1602. At Troy during the Trojan War, Troilus and Cressida begin a love affair. Cressida is forc ...

'', to provide the lyrics for him to set. Hassall selected six poems from

Gerald Bullett Gerald William Bullett (30 December 1893 – 3 January 1958) was a British man of letters. He was known as a novelist, essayist, short story writer, critic, poet and publisher. He wrote both supernatural fiction and some children's literature. A ...

's anthology ''The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems''. All were from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries and all were by unknown writers. Reflecting that, Walton gave the cycle the title ''Anon in Love''. The first three songs have lyrics from the

Elizabethan age The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The Roman symbol of Britannia (a female per ...

and are more chaste in tone than the last three, which are later and bawdier.

Premiere, arrangements and content

Pears and Bream gave the first performance of the cycle on 21 June 1960 at

Shrubland Hall Shrubland Palace, Coddenham, Coddenham, Suffolk, is an historic English Palace with planned gardens in Suffolk, England, built in the 1770s. The Palace was used by the Royal Family members and briefly reopened as a hotel, restaurant and spa in ...

, Suffolk as part of the that year's

. The work was an immediate success; the final song had to be encored, and the reviews were excellent. The music critic of ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' wrote that although some of Walton's recent works had received a mixed press, "these settings of sixteenth and seventeenth century love Poems must surely he universally welcomed. Fired by the artistry and virtuosity of these two musicians. Walton has distilled the fruits of his experience into a potent and concentrated musical utterance, sometimes direct and sometimes curiously subtle". The reviewer in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' said that the cycle revealed a compactness of invention that the composer had not invoked since ''Façade'', and added "it is an unexpected delight to find Walton so successful in this field". ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...

'' found the songs "absolutely delightful, with a sprightliness and wit reminiscent of the composer's early works". In 1971 Walton arranged the cycle for tenor and chamber orchestra, consisting of strings, harp and percussion (

tabor Tabor may refer to: Places Czech Republic * Tábor, a town in the South Bohemian Region ** Tábor District, the surrounding district * Tábor, a village and part of Velké Heraltice in the Moravian-Silesian Region Israel * Mount Tabor, Galilee, ...

, tambourine, block and side drum). This version was first performed at the Mansion House, London in May 1971, by the tenor

Robert Tear Robert Tear, CBE (8 March 1939 – 29 March 2011) was a Welsh tenor singer, teacher and conductor. He first became known singing in the operas of Benjamin Britten in the mid-1960s. From the 1970s until his retirement in 1999 his main operati ...

and the

London Mozart Players London Mozart Players (LMP) are a British chamber orchestra founded in 1949. LMP are the longest-established chamber orchestra in the United Kingdom. Since 1989, the orchestra has been Resident Orchestra at Fairfield Halls, Croydon. History Begin ...

, conducted by

Harry Blech Hirsch "Harry" Blech CBE (June 1909 – 9 May 1999) was a British violinist and conductor. He founded the London Mozart Players in 1949, and was known also as a conductor of studio recordings for His Master's Voice and Decca Records. Life Harr ...

.Craggs, p. 136 After Walton's death

arranged the cycle for voice and piano. This version was premiered in May 1989 at the

Wigmore Hall The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street, in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall; it is considered to have particularly good building acoustics, acoustics. It specialis ...

, London, by the tenor

Martyn Hill Martyn Hill (b. 14 Sept 1944) is a British tenor. Life and career Hill was born in Rochester, Kent on September 14, 1944. He studied at King's College, Cambridge, followed by the Royal College of Music. He pursued further vocal training with Audr ...

and the pianist Graham Johnson. All three versions of the cycle have been commercially recorded.Notes to Chandos CD CHAN 8824 (1990) The six songs of the cycle are: *Fain Would I Change *O Stay, Sweet Love *Lady, When I Behold *My Love in Her Attire *I Gave Her Cakes *To Couple is a Custom. :Source: ''William Walton: A Catalogue''. The cycle takes about nine minutes in performance.Craggs, p. 135

References

Sources

* * {{William Walton 1960 compositions Art songs Classical song cycles in English Song cycles by William Walton English poems Orchestral songs Music commissioned by ensembles or performers