Musical Setting
As most explicitly noted by the first quatrain, the poem was originally intended to be sung. Indeed, as noted by Stephen Medcalf, Emeritus professor at Sussex University, the text itself seems to imply melody and verse. However, due to the oral tradition of the time, the original melody of the song was not notated and over the course of time was forgotten.
Since the rediscovery of the text, many composers have set the text to music, amongst them diverse choral or vocal interpretations by Martin Shaw, Patrick Hadley, Roger Quilter, John Gerrish, Gustav Holst, Arnold Bax Peter Warlock, R.R. Terry, Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten ("As Dewe in Aprille" in his Ceremony of Carols), Ronald Corp (1975), and John Adams (as the chorus "I Sing of a Maiden" in his opera-oratorio El Niño).
Read more about this topic: I Syng Of A Mayden
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or setting:
“Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The supreme, the merciless, the destroyer of opposition, the exalted King, the shepherd, the protector of the quarters of the world, the King the word of whose mouth destroys mountains and seas, who by his lordly attack has forced mighty and merciless Kings from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same to acknowledge one supremacy.”
—Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–59 B.C.)