Soft Was The Wind

Album: Seven Sappho Songs for soprano and piano (1904)
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Songfacts®:

  • In 2000, the English Poetry and Song Society put out Seven Sappho Songs for soprano and piano, which was published by Thames Publishing.

    This large format pamphlet contains seven songs in a song cycle, thus:

    "Soft Was The Wind"
    "I Shall Be Ever Maiden"
    "The Apple Orchard"
    "Hesperus"
    "Love Shakes My Soul"
    "The Quiet Mist"
    "Lonely Night"

    These were all originally poems by William Bliss Carman that were set to music by Ivor Gurney.

    William Bliss Carman (1861-1929) was a leading Canadian poet, although he spent most of his life in the US. In 1904, he published Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (by that time he was known as simply Bliss Carman). This work was after the Greek poetess Sappho of Lesbos.

    Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) was an English poet and composer.

    According to Richard Carder in the aforementioned Seven Sappho Songs for soprano and piano:

    The cycle was first performed in this order on the 29th October 1998 by Georgina Colwell (soprano) and Nigel Foster (piano) at the Blackheath Concert Halls, London, under the auspices of The English Poetry and Song Society.

    "Soft Was The Wind" is set on the Greek island of Lesbos. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England

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