Songs of dusk and renewal

Songs of Dusk and Renewal sets two poems from Alfred Edward Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896) for baritone voice and orchestra, with the intent to demonstrate the timeless significance of the text. Housman’s collection, largely explored by English composers in the first half of the twentieth century, remains a valid source for composers, yet the writings are seldom observed in recent music. In the present work, poems IV (“Reveille”) and XLVI (“Bring, in this timeless grave to throw”) are reconciled musically through deep constructs and surface attraction, while being informed by critical and historical perspectives.