Together with Parry's English Lyrics and some pieces by Stanford, these are among the foundation stones of the modern English art-song, and in two senses they are more enterprising than anything by Stanford or even Parry. Firstly, they are both substantial and powerfully dramatized song-cycles—in a most interesting sleeve-note, Stephen Banfield points out how very recent an experience the song-cycle, even the song recital itself was in late-Victorian Britain. Secondly, Somervell's A Shropshire Lad was by several years the first attempt by a composer of real consequence to come to terms with the fruitful poetic world of A. E. Housman. It is only six years after the Tennyson settings of Maud (and Somervell had still only just turned 40) and yet, although the roots of his style in Schumann and Brahms are still very obvious, the true song-writer's instinct is immediately apparent in the way that his imagery and his textures change to meet the requirements of a poet who is worlds away from Tennyson in tone and diction. Where Tennyson evoked boldness and urgent passion, vividly characterful piano writing and a wide-ranging eloquence, Housman draws Somervell, perhaps only half-consciously, towards a more reserved simplicity, towards a never underlined expressiveness, towards a folk-song-like economy of gesture.
There are fine songs here, and only that evident rootedness in the German tradition can explain their neglect; certainly their responsiveness to words, their freshness despite their occasional derivativeness, their strength in confronting big and 'difficult' emotions make them distinguished as well as pioneering examples of English song. Try, if you do not know them, the lovely lyrical line and delicate but far from fragile upward and downward arpeggios of ''Birds in the high hall-garden'', or the unexpected but blithely delightful waltz-strains of ''Come into the garden, Maud'' (both these from the Tennyson cycle), or two fine settings of Housman texts that not many other composers chose to set: ''There pass the careless people'' (a splendid Schumannesque epigram) or the aching contemplation, in ''White in the moon'', of a road to a land of lost happiness down which there can be no return. There is an imagination at work in these songs, and in others here, that is fully aware of the subtlety and richness of these poems, and if just a few of the settings betray their models too clearly, what of that?
Maud has been recorded before (World Records SHE527, 5/76—nla), and it would be pleasing if John Carol Case's gentler, more reflective account were to return to the catalogue, but Wilson-Johnson has the more desirable coupling (Case chose Butterworth's Shropshire Lad cycle) and his performances have a pronounced and attractive character of their own: they are forthrightly sung, with an impressive range, from a shadowed quietness to full-throated opulence. One or two notes emerge slightly shakily, but these are minor flaws in readings that sound so convinced and convincing of Somervell's stature. Norris is a first-rate partner, relishing the subtleties of the piano-writing as much as its moments of barn-storming drama. The recording places the voice less forward than is customary, and some of the details of the accompaniment are veiled by reverberance: many will hear this as a realistic simulation of, say, London's Wigmore Hall acoustic, but I could have done with a touch more closeness and clarity, myself.'