Songs with Violins
for bass(F-f'), 2 violins and continuo
Ref. no Cro 2 (in 'cantatas') Price £ 9.50 cover page To order: ☞
This edition contains two songs with instruments by Croft, collected together with works by Jeremiah Clarke and others, in a manuscript in the Tenbury collection. In fact, although the first is ascribed at the end to Mr William Croft' the second has no title and is anonymous.
The first song, How charming is Beauty, which at first sight appears rather innocuous, has in fact a sensuous, almost Bacchanalian flavour, and advocates music as the food of love. The second, Lost is my Love, is a more substantial piece in the tradition of the 'mad' song, sung by a desperate lover. It lacks the kaleidoscopic changes of mood of the best examples of this genre, such as Purcell's Let the dreadfull Engines, but contains intriguing changes in pace and rhythm. The text is also set by William Corbett in his Op. 7 cantata, published in about 1725. However both this and the Tenbury MS contain an obscurity in the meaning of one line, possibly due to a corruption of the original text, whose author is unknown.
While this edition is the sole responsibility of the editor, a grateful acknowledgement must be made to Dr Peter Holman for bringing these two songs to light in the first place, (when he prepared them for a recording by David Thomas), and for his generous help in making his material available to the editor
