Four Traditional Songs (version for string orchestra) (2025)

Comprises the individual titles:
A Brisk Young Lad
Searching for Lambs
The Cruel Mother
The Bitter Withy

COMPOSER’S NOTE

I selected these four songs after spending many hours obsessing over Alfred Deller’s Vanguard recording of British folksongs. One in particular struck me as heartbreakingly poignant: his unaccompanied rendition of the Bitter Withy. I tried to imagine what a highly stylized but understated accompaniment might sound like, and that forms the fourth song in this collection. The Cruel Mother, about a woman who kills her children and is then visited by their ghosts, is a particularly gruesome murder ballad, and works over a large vocal range. Searching for Lambs has a wonderfully irregular footprint, which required very little interference from me, and A Brisk Young Lad is one of the most unforgivingly sad ballads in the catalogue. This collection is dedicated to Iestyn Davies.

– Nico Muhly 2011