Work
Sings Harry
for baritone and guitar
Films, Audio & Samples
About
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. Kerry Henderson arranged this work for baritone and guitar in 2014.
Contents note
- These songs will not stand
- "When I am old sings Harry"
- Once the Days
- The Casual Man
- The Flowers of the Sea
- I Remember
Text note
Poems by Denis Glover
Performance history
21 Feb 2014: Performed by Kerry Henderson (baritone) and David Temple (guitar) in Uptown Gallery, in Kingston, New York.