Song for Medium Voice in the Key of F with Piano accompaniment by George Frideric Handel. With words by W.G Rothery.

Elgar was pre-eminently the composer of large forms. Complex lengthy development of musical ideas was for him a measure of genius. His songs with the exception of the orchestral cycle Sea Pictures were not often the vehicles for his most striking ideas. Paradoxically he was also bedevilled by a fine literally taste. He once told a friend that he felt it better to set the best second-rate poetry to music for the most immortal verse is music already. Some of his songs are therefore settings of poets now all but forgotten such as Arthur Salmon and Gilbert Parker: to their verse his music might make a vital addition. Elgar's songs offer authentic Edwardianreflections which we can value now in their own terms. These songs are full of echoes of a master's thoughts - and especially in the songs written for the stage - flashes of his genius.

It could be argued that Geoffrey Bush's most characteristic music is for voices: stage-works choral pieces and solo songs. With a natural affinity for a wide range of texts (from Chaucer to Stevie Smith via Jonson Wilde and Virginia Woolf) - his music always serves to embellish and illuminate the given word.