The cycle was originally composed for baritone and piano. Yet as one hears in the first song, Harry sings to ‘an old guitar’. In the piano version, Lilburn incorporates idiomatic guitar gestures into accompaniment throughout: strumming, broken chords, and fading guitar snaps. These serve not only to evoke the guitar, but also to strengthen one’s sense of the songs as self-reflective, self-accompanied cycle of ‘songs within songs’. Lilburn subsequently arranged the cycle for tenor and guitar (1953, SLD-47), and for tenor and piano(1954, EC-26)
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