Buy tickets to my recital at 7pm on Thursday April 2nd 2026 (Leighton House, London) here:
https://www.trybooking.com/uk/FVU
For almost five years a printed-up score of my “Chris Swithinbank: 12 Songs (2021)” has rested, untouched and unopened, on my piano at home. I had the weird feeling that I wasn’t interested in them or, perhaps, that they might be very difficult to sing, even impossible…. I felt wary of getting involved - for fear of….. I don’t know what….
Leighton House
Luckily for me, George Ireland, who directed and coached me in Opera Integra’s Carmen recently, seemed to be quite intrigued. He is very well known as a world-class pianist and répétiteur: I’m deeply honoured and grateful to have his input, both as coach and accompanist. We have workshopped the songs together: making cuts, reworking the piano part, improving phrasing/dynamics etc.
The piano’s role in my songs is of equal importance to the voice part - there a few extended piano solo sections.
I’m very excited to announce that there will be a performance of these songs, with George Ireland on the Steinway and me singing, at Leighton House at 7pm on Thursday April 2nd 2026. Book a ticket here:
More information about the songs and the texts…….
Where I started: I was totally immersed in singing the songs of George Butterworth (1885-1916) and bemused by the fact that, instead of increasing his wonderful output, he served in the army and died, aged 31, at the Battle of the Somme. A E Housman’s poems form the backbone texts for Butterworth’s songs and, for me, Housman’s poetry seemed an obvious place to begin my search for words to set to music. I found “The Rain” and couldn’t help thinking that this poem could be thought of as describing Butterworth at The Somme (not possible - in reality).
The group of four songs, which end the recital, comprise a single unit, or song-cycle starting and finishing in C minor. I’m using a rising semi-tone: “play up” or a descending semi-tone “the rain” as my building bricks. This semitone is also a melody in the accompaniment of Play Up and a harmonic shift in the first bars of Fragment. The rough key-centres of the four songs are C minor, G major, Eb minor and C minor (the last song ends with an interrupted cadence)
Housman (1859-1936) was an English poet and scholar, famed for
A Shropshire Lad.
I then spent a long time trying to find texts that would help explain a young man’s motivation to join up and serve as a soldier in the trenches. I ended up with Vitae Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), and then I wrote the poem: England needs Me about a young man in a pub thinking about joining up, ending with “Fragment” by Rupert Brooke.
The Great War: Four Songs
1) VITAE LAMPADA
by Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)
2) ENGLAND NEEDS ME
by Chris Swithinbank
Now winter time, the ground’s a-frost,
We sit here but not so cheer.
Can’t buy a beer, my wages lost,
A penny a pint: too much I fear!
I took some timber to light my fire,
My family shivers, a huddled drove.
I sadly got the farmer’s ire:
“You work here, you don’t own the grove!”
Come on you lads, let’s play a round,
A game of darts, pals, deal the cards.
The dominoes rattle with homely sound,
The glass half full will warm our hearts.
No work for us at Christmas time,
To warm those fields we need the sun.
The army can teach us how to shine,
Join up! Join up! And beat the Hun!
Ferguson, the farmer is here,
A hush descends, “good day fine sir!”
He wants to buy us all a drink,
The tweeded gent is now popular!
“I want to buy you all a drink
And give you lads a boost, it should.”
He looks at me and what d’you think?
“Not you, not you, you took my wood!”
The nineteen fourteen army book:
‘“The development of a soldierly spirit”
That I have, if I’m not mistook!
All working boys together in it!
“Training of the body, training in the use of
rifle, bayonet and spade”
Duty, The King, our home keep free!
Quick march! Enlist!
England needs me.
3) THE RAIN by A E Housman (text above)
*************************
My thoughts then turned away from the angst of The Great War. I found this spell-binding poem:
1) A CART WITH APPLES
by Christopher Middleton (1926-2015) 111 Poems
In the blue shadow
alone with its rose
and full of fields
round ones and yellow ones
an apple stands
a blue apple stands
in the field of yellow
alone with its cart
and round of roses
full ones and shadow ones
and full of yellow
the shadow stands
alone with an apple
a rose one a round one
in a blue field
and in the apple shadows
blue ones and yellow ones
a cart stands
alone with its field
and full of rounds
but in the field of roses
and full of apples
yellow ones and round ones
a blue cart stands
alone with its shadow
At least 5 words reoccur in every verse, jumbled up, by chance perhaps (?) How would it be, I thought, if I selected a bluesy sounding chord every time the word blue occurs? So I set myself the task of giving each repeated word a fixed chord. shadow is always the chord of F major, rose is Ab major, field is C major, yellow is a diminished 7th, apple is Bb major. This gave me a very fixed parameter for composing the song: it was like working on a puzzle, I enjoyed this process very much. I’d be very interested to hear if this method of chord selection has been used before.
(Carcanet Press has granted gratis permission for this one-time performance of Christopher Middleton’s two poems)
I found it very difficult to find poems - of a useful length for a song - which describe a picture. Perhaps I could write one myself? Picking words out of a hat seemed an absorbing way of creating my text for the next song. I put into a hat the various elements that I could see in the incredible painting Rain, Steam and
Speed - The Great Western Railway by J.M.W.Turner and pulled them out at random to create my own text:
2) TURNER’S PICTURE
In sleepy village no-one will walk
Wind-flattened barley crops lie in the field
With fire to warm the swirling storm
the furnace of sun shines through an arch
A stalwart coble holds firm with green lug
observed by the viaduct cool and clear.
Furore of Turner: Rain, Steam and Speed,
The smoke-stack of black is suddenly here!
Burning and vivid late summer sun
colours the rain, the clouds, the steam.
A fiery smoke, in sky it smoulders!
Fire-door flung open, your firebox a-flame!
Poppies bend with golden barley,
harvest will not come this tear.
Green weeds brace to face the storm….
Thrusting, rushing, clattering, shattering,
merciless force moves engine through storm.
The driver is trusting the way ahead.
A whistle notes pierces. An unholy form.
Rattling, battling, onward, onward,
plummeting through the haze and rain.
Furore of Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed.
The smoke-stack of black is suddenly here.
Stone-silent sombre, the stately bridge,
unwarmed in late summer heat.
In sun and breeze, in swirling storm,
in rain and steam and speed.
With fiery smoke the steam billows skyward,
the driving wind gives barley no sway.
In field and meadow all is bending,
from funnel the smoke flies clean away.
Thrusting and rushing, clattering, shattering,
merciless force grinds engine through storm.
Steam is hissing, in torrent, splattering,
scattering wind and rain with scorn.
(Lyrics by Chris Swithinbank)
3) SHOREHAM WALK by Christopher Middleton: 111 poems
We walked
up through the wood
nettles & oak
a dark green
fall of light
leading us
past soft
erect wheat
then the white
potato flowers
& flints, a few
rusty can tops
it is the shining
June day, warm
as seldom
in our country
on our skin
a south wind
silver barley ears
are swaying
swaying us
& a lark
less visible than
the flower, blue
big, no bigger
than your pupil
under crusty
oaks again, ferns
they smell of salt
curved sea waves
& a place
we found
called the kingdom
of children
you said, because
nobody frowns
as you climbed up
vanishing up
a giant beech, red
as old blood
tall as the sky,
so many strong
branches it
was easy
The accompaniment here is improvised, using the suggested harmonies
4 ) DAFFODILS
by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Key structure of FOUR PICTURES: 1) F major 2) D major 3) Bb major 4) C minor
FOUR ANGLO-SAXON SONGS
by William Hart-Smith (1923-1994)
The melody lines in songs 1 - 3 are in Dorian Mode. This is the scale used in Gregorian chant of the Medieval and Renaissance (c.9th-12th centuries). On a piano, D Dorian starts on D, and uses all white notes; it can be thought of as a major scale with a flattened 3rd and 7th. Song 4 is in C minor.
1) Death of a Craftsman
Hard to decide what is rightfully ours
of his crafthoard
and what we shall let him keep.
Let him have what he needs
to set up in business again
in the land of shades.
Let him take the anvil,
one round hammer
and one hammer bladed for cutting,
a selection of chisels,
a mould for spearheads
and a handstone for trimming.
Will he skin his knuckles there
as he did so often here?
Put into the urn also
some unworked ore of tin and copper.
It may be hard to find
where he is going.
2) The Silver Chalice
Seventeen feet down in the gravel
near Trewhiddle in Cornwall
while searching for tin in a streamwork
itinerant miners found a silver chalice
in a deposit of loose stones
in which the relic had been buried
filled with coins of gold and silver, silver pennies,
some of Alfred and some of Ceowulf
of the Kingdom of Mercia,
with a slab of slate on top
to cover over the coin-hoard
against the heathen Danes. A longship
oared herself into the cove.
We saw her from the hilltop
and ran to tell Brother Tristram
as she spilled men forth on the shingle.
Some things to find we left them
to appease them: folk too old to fly
to flesh their swords in, bread,
a cask of ale, and meat still cooking,
the gilded cross above the altar,
too great for us to carry; and the alter-cloths,
the reredos for burning. But the Cup
which had Christ’s blood in it, we buried.
3) A.D. 61
And we who were drawn up in two ranks,
two rows of fifty men each, each man
with broadsword unsheathed, shield
in left hand, shield overlapping shield,
waited for them to come
in motley disarray upon us.
And a third rank in front, kneeling,
their spears butted into the soil,
pointing at an angle
to pin, transfix, impale
the first to charge.
Were horrified at what we saw. Some of us
shivered and trembled. It was their chariots
come out in front of their host and playing about
the open ground as if it were a game
to see who could outdo the other
in daring and manoeuvring. Some ran out
along the shaft between the horses
while at full gallop, even stood upon the yoke,
hurling more insults than missiles at us.
A cool contempt they demonstrated,
showing their skill to shake us.
They displayed the same inconsequence
in driving their chariots down the slope of the hill:
all done with streaming hair, and scream, and yell.
It shook me, I can tell you!
There were women too in that host,
also with weapons, who danced and weaved
in and out among the fighting-men. And priests
who stood in front of all, in long white robes,
arms uplifted, praying to their gods for victory.
Fires they lit. Torches they lit
and brandished. It was terrible.
But we stood fast, and silent, staying firm
in outward appearance, if not inwardly.
And when at length they came screaming upon us
we took the shock, as Romans should, upon our shields –
even our Gaulish mercenaries, who had trembled most.
More of a show it was to frighten us.
Our discipline prevailed. More wood!
More wood, more wood, to burn their pitiful dead.
4) The Bell of St Conall
From the windswept crofts
out of the drifting peatsmoke,
from their huts of sodbrick,
grass-thatched,
from the caves in the hillside,
the people come, emerge,
on Sunday, on the Lord’s Day
in ones and twos and threes,
humbly, obediently, dutifully,
to the ringing of a cowbell,
converge on the church in the hollow
to the summons of a bell
in the bony hand of a monk
in his habit of homespun,
cowl pulled over his ears
against the aching wind
and the knives of sleet in the rainsquall,
to the insistence of a handbell
ringing in the congregation
from shieling and shelter,
out of the marshes in the dawnmist.
The Bell of St. Conall
was later enshrined
in a cairn by the wayside,
the bell protected
in bonds of riveted iron:
a relic very sacred, miracle-working,
upon which oaths were taken.
(Permission to use William Hart-Smith’s poetry has been applied for)
about Chris Swithinbank: https://auditionoracle.com/singer/chris_swithinbank
https://www.operabase.com/chris-swithinbank-a2140846/bio/en
Leighton House
Housman (1859-1936) was an English poet and scholar, famed for A Shropshire Lad.
