This work was commissioned by the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts Ltd. with theaid of funds provided by the John S. Cohen Foundation and the PRS Foundation. The firstperformance was given by Rachel Nicholls and Paul Plummer at St. Andrew’s Church Presteigne on 29 August 2005.Composer's NoteGladestry Quatrains is a setting of 12 short poems by Jo Shapcott from her collection of the same title. It originated in a project for the 2003 Presteigne Festival called A Garland for Presteigne in which 10 composers associated with the Festival were asked to write a short song each celebrating the Welsh border country the choice of poetryranged widely and I chose two of Jo Shapcott’s evocative miniatures (still adding up to slightly less than the timing I had been requested to provide!). As I wrote them I started to make sketches for some more settings from the same collection and the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts very kindly commissioned this new larger song-cycle proper for their 2005 Festival. The original pair of poems form the third (Gwaithla Brook) and last (Cefn Hir) of the songs in which the eighth combines two poems Burl Hill and Newchurch. Throughout I have been aware of the sights and sounds of nature the character of the landscape and the sense of history and timelessness of this beautiful part of the world as reflected in Jo Shapcott’s poetry as well as (I hope) the wit and directness of her expression. The whole work though it has eleven songs still lasts only about 20 minutes the concision of the texts and the need to find musical equivalents to this was an important part of the concept of the piece.        John McCabe 2005

Daughters of Britannia. A fifteen-minute song cycle for soprano and piano, which was first performed on 8 September 2007 at the European Music Festival, Stuttgart by Diana Damrau (soprano) and Matthias Lademann (piano). Both the music and the text are by Iain Bell.

Edward Thomas was born in Lambeth on 3rd March 1878 and spent most of his childhood in London. His holidays however were spent with relatives in Swindon and it was there that he developed his abiding love of all things rural.He was educated at St Paul's Hammersmith and was encouraged in his creative writing by James Ashcroft Noble whose daughter he secretly married after her father's death and to the great disapproval of her family. Despitegrowing anxiety over poverty ill health and literary discouragement which exacerbated a natural tendency to depression Thomas worked unstintingly as a reviewer and wrote and published over 30 books between 1897 and 1917.'Adlestrop' was written with four other poems between 7th and 9th June 1915. He enlisted in 1915 at the age of 37 and was called to the Front in 1917. He arrived at Arras on 9th February 1917 and was killed on the 9th April Easter Monday by a shell blast in the opening minutes of the offensive.This work for Soprano and Piano was premiered by Jane Manning and Dominic Saunders at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1989. Text by Edward Thomas. A3 ScoreAvailable: SOS03574