The subtitle "English Songs" on this release by tenor Ben Johnson and pianist James Baillieu is technically accurate, but doesn't give the prospective buyer an idea of the rather specialized nature of the repertoire contained within. The music dates from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, but you are not getting a set of art songs by composers like Roger Quilter, Gerald Finzi, John Ireland, and the like. These have been popular in recent years, but the music on the program here, although it would ...
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The subtitle "English Songs" on this release by tenor Ben Johnson and pianist James Baillieu is technically accurate, but doesn't give the prospective buyer an idea of the rather specialized nature of the repertoire contained within. The music dates from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, but you are not getting a set of art songs by composers like Roger Quilter, Gerald Finzi, John Ireland, and the like. These have been popular in recent years, but the music on the program here, although it would once probably have been quite familiar, has largely been forgotten. They are, in short, pieces of the kind sometimes referred to as ballads, sometimes unkindly in America as potted-palm music, and sometimes by a variety of other names. Not popular music, but not art songs either, they're harmonically simple, broadly melodic, and devoted to musical exploitation of their sentimental texts. Indeed, probably the most famous work on the program is Arthur Sullivan's The Lost Chord...
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![Johnson: I Heard You Singing [Ben Johnson] [Opus Arte: Oacd9032d]](https://www2.alibris-static.com/cover/o15582nb14e_t.jpg)
