My Lute and I (2011)
(Song cycle for tenor and guitar)

1. Sigh and Moan  (‘At most mischief’)
2. Tell Me  (‘Ah, Robin’)
3. How?  (‘How should I’)
4. A Kiss  (‘Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss’)
5. Wonders  (‘Will ye see what wonders love hath wrought’)
6. Out of My Mind  (‘Shall she never out of my mind’)
7. Tangled  (‘Tangled I was in love’s snare’)
8. Sometime I Sing  (‘Sometime I sigh, sometime I sing’)
9. Now Cease  (‘My lute, awake! Perform the last’)

Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) is now remembered as a poet, translator of Petrarch and establisher of the sonnet as an English verse form, but none of his poems was published in his lifetime.  The son of a court official, he followed his father into the service of Henry VIII.  As a diplomat he travelled widely in Europe, including to Rome as part of the mission seeking Papal approval for Henry’s divorce.  His services were rewarded by a knighthood in 1535, but falling in love with Ann Boleyn was not the best of career moves and Wyatt was lucky to survive imprisonment in the Tower.  On his release he was allowed to resume his ambassadorial duties.  His private life was often turbulent, encompassing a failed marriage and a succession of mistresses. 

Wyatt died unexpectedly in 1542 on his way to meet a diplomatic mission in Falmouth, when he stopped off to stay with his friend Sir John Horsey in Dorset.  His body was interred in the Horsey family tomb in Sherborne Abbey, although it has been suggested that Wyatt might have staged his own death in order to live out his life in seclusion with his last great love, Elizabeth Darrell. 

Wyatt’s up-and-down love life is reflected in the poems chosen for this cycle.  The two “wonders” of the central song are the legendary magnetic rock that draws ships to their doom, and the phoenix, whose rebirth from its own ashes Wyatt likens to his own capacity for renewal through love.  Many of Wyatt’s poems were clearly intended to be sung, some perhaps even to existing melodies.  The music of the third song (‘How?’) makes use of a melody adapted from the English folk song ‘Searching for Lambs’. 

These settings of Wyatt’s words were composed for Mark Padmore and Morgan Szymanski, and first performed by them in a recital at the Chapel, Lulworth Castle, Dorset, on the 13th of July 2011, as part of the Summer Music Society of Dorset’s 2011 season of concerts.