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Track(s) taken from CDH55433

The sprig of thyme

First line:
Wunst I had a sprig of thyme
composer
Percy Grainger (1882-1961)
No 24 of British Folk-Music Settings
arranger
Dana Perna (b1958)
author of text
Anonymous - traditional
Lincolnshire folk song

Polyphony, Libby Crabtree (soprano), James Gilchrist (tenor), Stephen Layton (conductor) Detailed performer information
Recording details: January 1996
St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Mark Brown
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: May 1996
Total duration: 2 minutes 35 seconds

Cover artwork: Front illustration. Roland Piper (b?)
 

The sprig of thyme is a choral arrangement by the American composer and Grainger scholar, Dana Paul Perna. Grainger’s original setting of the folk-song collected from Joseph Taylor of Saxby-All-Saints, Lincolnshire, was made for his mother’s birthday in 1920. The arranger comments: ‘While listening to a recording of this Lincolnshire folk-song in Grainger’s voice and piano version, I began to imagine how it would sound cast for mixed voices. The use of the male voice four-some corresponds to Grainger’s own use of the same forces in his settings of Dollar and a half a day, Shenandoah and Stormy …’.

from notes by Barry Peter Ould © 1996

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