Robert Herrick and his composers

An erudite young friend of mine is walking out with an equally erudite young lady called Julia. I assumed he knew Robert Herrick’s ‘Julia Poems’ and employed them in the course of his wooing. It turned out he did not and was not, but I imagine both failings are now remedied. For my part, although I knew a fair number of the Julia poems, I had not realized there were so many (70+) and did not know Herrick wrote 2,500 poems in all. Most of these are very short but even so that’s quite a literary footprint. Herrick’s poetry is, at first glance, straightforward, employing sensual imagery of roses, cherry, cream, silk and so on. Interestingly, the poems to Julia do not seem to have been based on a specific sexual relationship; experience of the beloved is based on close observation but rarely tactile.

It is unsurprising that Herrick’s verse has attracted song composers, and I knew some examples (see below) but I was astonished to see how popular he was. I am grateful to Wikipedia for the following which, believe it or not, is far from comprehensive…

The first composers to set Herrick to music were near-contemporaries: at least 40 settings of 31 poems appear in manuscript and printed songbooks of 1624–1683, by Henry and William Lawes, John Wilson, Robert Ramsey and others. It is clear from references within Hesperides that many other settings have not survived.

From the early 20th century, Herrick's verse became popular with a range of composers.[15] One of them, Fritz Hart, was by far the most prolific, with more than 120 settings composed throughout his life, mostly collected in Fourteen Songs, op. 10 (1912), Twenty-One Songs, op. 23 (1916), Twenty Five Songs in five sets, opp. 50–54 (1922), Nine Sets of Four Songs Each, opp. 82–90 (1930), Three Sets of Five Songs, opp. 148–150 (1941), and Two Sets of Five Songs, opp. 166–167 (1948).

Other settings from this period include:

Arnold Bax: To Daffodils; Eternity

Lennox Berkeley: How love came in

Havergal Brian: The Mad Maid's Song; Why dost thou wound, and break my heart?; The Night Piece

Frank Bridge: The Primrose; The Hag; Fair Daffodils

Benjamin Britten: Spring Symphony (To Violets); Five Flower Songs (To Daffodils; The Succession of the Four Sweet Months)

Benjamin Burrows: Upon Love; The Olive Branch; The Wounded Cupid; To Music

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: The Guest (Scena)

Jean Coulthard: Threnody (Here a solemn fast we keep), choral setting (1935)

Walford Davies: Eternity; Noble Numbers, op. 28 (Weigh me the fire; God's Dwelling; Grace for a Child; What Sweeter Music)

Frederick Delius: To Daffodils

George Dyson: To Music

Christopher Edmunds: The Bellman

John Foulds: To Music

Ivor Gurney: To Violets; Lullaby

Joseph Holbrooke: To Dianeme

Herbert Howells: Here she lies, a pretty bud

Peter Hurford: Litany to the Holy Spirit

Ernest John Moeran: Candlemas Eve

Hubert Parry: Julia

Roger Quilter: To Julia, op. 8 (The Bracelet; The Maiden Blush; To Daisies; The Night Piece; Julia's Hair; Cherry Ripe). To Electra; Tulips

Dagmar de Corval Rybner: Bid Me to LIve[17]

Alan Rawsthorne: To Daffodils

Hugh S. Roberton: Here a solemn fast we keep (threnody for equal voices, 1929)

Charles Villiers Stanford: To Carnations; To the Rose; A Welcome Song; To Music

Robert Still: To Julia; Upon Julia's Clothes

Donald Tovey: The Mad Maid's Song (in three parts)

Ralph Vaughan Williams: To Daffodils (two settings)

Peter Warlock: Two Short Songs (I held love's head; Thou gav'st me leave to kiss)

Leslie Woodgate: The White Island

Fritz Hart was a name previously unknown to me. A contemporary of Vaughan-Williams, Holst, and Coleridge-Taylor at the Royal College of Music, he was a notably versatile musician and made his way to Australia as music director of a touring operetta company. There he made a considerable name for himself as an academic, conductor and composer, writing some twenty operas, the Herrick settings mentioned above, many other songs and a good deal of orchestral music. Frustratingly, very little of this has been recorded and not everything published. I am particularly sorry not to be able to hear his setting of ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’, a poem I’ll consider in some detail below. Other composers setting this remarkable lyric include:

Bruce Adolphe (b. 1955), "Upon Julia's clothes", published 1982 [ tenor and piano ], from To His Imaginary Mistress, no. 1 

 Geoffrey Bush (1920 - 1998), "Upon Julia's Clothes", 1949 [ baritone and piano ], from Four Songs from Herrick's 'Hesperides', no. 4 

 John Corigliano (b. 1938), "Upon Julia's clothes", 1959, published c1981, from Petit Fours (A Song Cyclette)

John Edmunds (1913 - 1986), "Whenas in silks my Julia goes" 

 by John Linton Gardner (1917 - 2011), "Upon Julia's clothes", op. 224 no. 3 (1996 ) [ SATB chorus and piano duet ], from Waltzsongs, no. 3 

 Fritz Bennicke Hart (1874 - 1949), "Upon Julia's clothes", op. 23 (Twenty-one songs) no. 2 (1916) [ voice and piano ] 

 John Lessard (b. 1920), "Whenas in silks my Julia goes", published 1984 

 Humphrey Procter-Gregg (1895 - 1980), "To Julia" [ voice and piano ] 

 Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022), "Upon Julia's clothes", published 1952, from Flight For Heaven, no. 3

 Robert Still (1910 - 1971), "To Julia" 

My thanks to Emily Ezust of the LiederNet Archive for this research.

Before we consider any music, let us look at the poem:

UPON JULIA’S CLOTHES

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see

That brave vibration each way free,

O how that glittering taketh me!

The primary focus here would seem to be on the clothes rather than Julia. The use of ‘liquefaction’ is masterly. This synaesthetic noun gives the clothes quasi supernatural qualities, solid becoming liquid, suggesting Julia is mythic rather than human (she is, remember, probably an ideal for Herrick rather than a ‘real’ woman). This impression is reinforced in the second stanza with further synaesthesia, as the silks show ‘brave vibration each way free’ and impress the poet with their ‘glittering’. The material appears to have a life of its own, trembling and luminous. And yet, there is a woman inside the clothes; silk on the female body can take on the appearance of a second skin, and here the ‘liquefaction’ gives an additional impression of water flowing over Julia’s naked body. This idea is reinforced when we realise that Herrick, as a cleric intellectual, would probably have known liquefaction’s additional meaning of ‘melting the soul through ardour’: Herrick might be said to be undressing Julia with his eyes (the repetition of ‘then’ certainly suggests excitement) and this excitement is carried over into stanza two where the ‘brave vibration’ could well be the movement of Julia’s body agitating the silk that covers it. Herrick is so ‘taken’ by this, that it is not too far-fetched to infer that he is sexually consumed or ravished by Julia’s radiance, and the flesh this radiance enfolds. A similar sentiment is found in ‘Woman Descending a Staircase’ by X.J. Kennedy (who has, probably, the best ever poet’s name…):

Toe after toe, a snowing flesh,

a gold of lemon, root and rind,

she sifts in sunlight down the stairs

with nothing on. Nor on her mind.

We spy beneath the banister

a constant thresh of thigh on thigh;

her lips imprint the swinging air

that parts to let her parts go by.

One-woman waterfall, she wears

her slow descent like a long cape

and pausing on the final stair,

collects her motions into shape.

Another similar, more robustly expressed idea, can be found among the works of ‘Anon’:

O darling Flo, I love you so,

I love you in your nightie.

When the moonlight flits across your tits:

Sweet Christ Almighty.

Flo’s body is touched by moonlight rather than watery silk, but her feminine power and its effect on her admirer is just as potent.

Returning to Herrick, I hope I have demonstrated that his poetry can be considerably more complex than it at first appears. This creates problems for composers, as the apparent straightforwardness of the words can lead to superficiality. For example, Ned Rorem is a fine song composer, but his version of ‘Upon Julia’s Clothes’ while pleasantly lyrical is nothing more. It is though far preferable to Geoffrey Bush’s rumbustious rugger-bugger version, which has an entirely misplaced ‘wham bam thank you ma’am’ resonance which I found profoundly distasteful. In any event, the Rorem is worth listening to in Donald Gramm’s version, for his suave, intelligent baritone, and immaculate diction. Gramm sings a range of Rorem songs with other American singers of his generation on a CD of 1960s recordings, accompanied by Rorem, which gives much pleasure.

As I have indicated, recordings of Fritz Hart’s songs are few and far between, so I am not able to judge how successfully he grapples with the particular challenges of setting Herrick. Professor Stephen Banfield offers a tantalising assessment in his magisterial ‘Sensibility and English Song’, saying that Hart ‘produces time and again, often within the tiniest song, a gesture, a strand of melody, or two-part counterpoint or a single chord that functions simultaneously as surprise and fulfilment. This mastery of epigram makes his endings particularly striking.’

I shall return to Hart in a later Post when I hope to have achieved a better idea of his vast output.

Perhaps the best known settings of Herrick’s ‘Julia’ poems are by Roger Quilter (1877-1953). Professor Banfield is decidedly sniffy about Quilter and it is certainly true that this most Edwardian of composers did little if anything to frighten the horses, with music that is generally the epitome of restrained good taste. What Banfield does acknowledge is how gratifying Quilter’s songs are for the vocalist and I can verify that they lie wonderfully well on the voice. Banfield also makes clear that Quilter’s life was far from the pleasant, dreamy existence his songs (and privileged background) might suggest and for this reason alone he deserves the fuller investigation I shall give him in a future Post.

But to consider ‘To Julia’. These songs were published in 1906 and given their first performance by Gervase Elwes, an English tenor of impeccable good taste and refinement but with a voice capable of considerable passionate intensity, as his many recordings testify.

Quilter sets six of Herrick’s poems, allowing himself the opportunity for lyrical but passionate introspection, and lively, more extrovert excitement. The cycle begins with a tranquil ‘Prelude’ for solo piano, but this is interrupted by the allegro con moto of ‘The Bracelet’:

Why I tie about thy wrist,

Julia, this silken twist;

For what other reason 'tis

But to show thee how, in part,

Thou my pretty captive art?

But thy bond slave is my heart:'

tis but silk that bindeth thee,

Knap the thread and thou art free;

But 'tis otherwise with me:-

am bound and fast bound, so

That from thee I cannot go;

f I could, I would not so.

The vocal line moves breathlessly over a lively piano accompaniment. The relatively angular, chromatic nature of the setting suggests the poet’s excitement at the paradox he is unfolding – the silken ‘favour’ around Julia’s wrist, suggesting her captivity, is far less ensnaring than the power she exerts over him. The last line of the poem is curious, almost bathetic, tacked on to the final couplet as an afterthought,  but Quilter ignores this reading and finishes with a decisive and climactic top F sharp (in the baritone key; for a tenor it would be a top A) making the male lover seem more virile than Herrick perhaps intended.

‘The Maiden Blush’ is marked moderato semplice but the poem is, perhaps, as so often with Herrick, not quite as simple as it might appear at first sight:

So look the mornings when the Sun

Paints them with fresh Vermilion:

So Cherries blush, and Kathern Peares,

And Apricocks, in youthfull yeares:

So Corrolls looke more lovely Red,

And Rubies lately polished:

So purest Diaper doth shine,

Stain'd by the Beames of Clarret wine:

As Julia looks when she doth dress

Her either cheeke with bashfullness.

Quilter’s setting is exquisitely beautiful: the opening phrases seem hesitant, but the vocal line increases in confidence so that the final four lines are set as a seamless sweep with only a single quaver rest interrupting the flow of satisfied adoration. In a pleasant touch, Quilter repeats ‘her either cheek’: there are two after all… It might be argued that there is sexual symbolism here qwhich Quilter ignores: a whole essay might be written on the implications of ‘purest Diaper’ ‘Stain’d by the Beames of Clarret’ wine but the song gives much pleasure on its own terms.

‘To Daisies – not to shut so soon’ is one of Herrick’s masterpieces and Quilter does it ample justice.

Shut not so soon; the dull-eyed night   

 Has not as yet begun

To make a seizure on the light,    

Or to seal up the sun.

No marigolds yet closed are,    

No shadows great appear;

Nor doth the early shepherd's star    

Shine like a spangle here.

Stay but till my Julia close    

Her life-begetting eye,

And let the whole world then dispose    

Itself to live or die.

Quilter is not a composer for the grand, operatic gesture but, although the first note of this song is marked mp, it is comparatively high in the voice and thus might be described as a gently passionate imperative. It is important the daisies do not shut ‘so soon’, not just because the natural world is still awake but because, crucially, Julia’s ‘life begetting eye’ is still open. Again, there seems to be a veiled sexual reference here, Julia’s glance is arousing and possibly a prelude to ‘begetting’, in the biblical sense. Additionally, Herrick would have been aware of the orgasmic connotations of the verb ‘to die’ and Quilter sets these words with an upward interval of a sixth, suggesting heightened emotion if not ecstasy. It is also worth pointing out that Gervase Elwes, in a recording that must be considered definitive, conjures considerable vocal passion in the final verse, to breath-taking effect.

The Night Piece

Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,

The shooting stars attend thee;

And the elves also,

Whose little eyes glow

Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.

No Will-o'-th'-Wisp mis-light thee,

Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee;

But on, on thy way,

Not making a stay,

Since ghost there's none to affright thee.

Let not the dark thee cumber;

What though the moon does slumber?

The stars of the night

Will lend thee their light,

Like tapers clear without number.

Then Julia let me woo thee,

Thus, thus to come unto me;

And when I shall meet

Thy silv'ry feet,

My soul I'll pour into thee.

The poet excitedly anticipates a meeting with Julia, and Quilter’s setting trips agreeably along as she makes unencumbered haste to meet him. The final line invites a sexual interpretation which Quilter seems to acknowledge with a passionate but descending final phrase, with a post coital downward octave on the last two notes. I have never understood foot fetishism but why else would Herrick mention Julia’s ‘silv’ry feet…?

‘Julia’s Hair’ inspired an exquisite miniature from Herrick which in turn inspires an exquisite miniature from Quilter:

Dew sate on Julia's hair,

And spangled too,

Like leaves that laden are

With trembling dew;

r glitter'd to my sight,

As when the beams

Have their reflected light

Danced by the streams.

The downward motion of the individual vocal phrases suggests languid but still enraptured contemplation of the beloved’s hair, which, like the silks mentioned earlier, seems wonderfully and alluringly alive.

Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,

Full and fair ones; come and buy.

If so be you ask me where

They do grow, I answer: There

Where my Julia's lips do smile;

There's the land, or cherry-isle,

Whose plantations fully show

All the year where cherries grow.

‘Cherry Ripe’ finds neither poet nor composer in the finest form, and Quilter’s repetition of some uninspired ideas doesn’t help, but the song’s unpretentious open-hearted rigour brings a richly rewarding cycle to a satisfying close.

Quilter has been well served on disc and ‘To Julia’ is featured on well filled recordings by baritones David Wilson-Johnson, Benjamin Luxon and Mark Stone (the latter recording all the songs on his own label). Should a tenor be preferred, the cycle has been recorded by John Mark-Ainsley, Nathan Vale and Paul Austin Kelly, and, as indicated above, Gervase Elwes’ recording of ‘To Daisies’ is required listening.