Five Childhood Lyrics is a choral composition by John Rutter, who set five texts, poems and nursery rhymes, for mixed voices (SATB with some divisi) a cappella.[1] Rutter composed the work for the London Concord Singers who first performed them in 1973.[2]
The first song is based on "Monday's Child", a fortune-telling song and nursery rhyme. The text of the second song is "The Owl and the Pussycat", a nonsense-poem by Edward Lear published in 1871. The third song is based on a poem, "Windy Nights", by Robert Louis Stevenson. The text for the fourth song is "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", a nursery rhyme and evening prayer. The fifth song uses the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence". The composer noted: "The Five Childhood lyrics are a kind of 'homage' to the world of children. I chose for my texts some of the rhymes and verses remembered from my earliest years, and set them to music as simply as I could—though the last of the five, which uses a familiar nursery tune, contains a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek elaboration."[3] The pieces were described by a reviewer for Gramophone as "delightful compositions",[4] while another reviewer noted "the energy and sharp-witted invention that characterize these youthful pieces".[5] The work was first published in 1974 by Oxford University Press.[6][7]
The songs were recorded in a collection of Rutter's secular works titled Fancies, performed under his direction by the Cambridge Singers, together with the summer songs of the same name, the winter songs When Icicles Hang,[8] and the instrumental Suite Antique.[1] They were recorded in 2002 on an album of secular music by Rutter, with Nicol Matt conducting the Nordic Chamber Choir.[4]
References
^ ab"Fancies". collegium.co.uk. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2014.
