Fand Catalogue

  

Secret Joys

Five Mary Webb Songs

for voice and piano

John Mitchell

The writer Mary Webb was very much ‘A Shropshire Lass’, having been born in that county in 1881. She developed a great love of the countryside there, and it was where she spent most of her life. Something of a literary late-starter, her most significant work dates from her mid-thirties. To some extent her few novels – the most remembered today probably being Gone to Earth and Precious Bane – have overshadowed her verse. Having suffered from ongoing ill health, she died at the early age of 46 in 1927, and it was only in the following year that her collected poems were published.

Much of Mary Webb’s verse focuses on a detailed observation of the rural landscape in her beloved Shropshire, with some notable descriptions of nature. The five poems selected for Secret Joys are all in this category. The first song records how the hawthorn in bud appeared to her as “green rain” suspended in mid-air, whilst songs two and three relate to the poet’s fascination with the red berries and hips of the hawthorn and rose. The fourth song is about the micro-observation of nature where “…We follow a secret highway/Hardly a traveller knows”, including a reference to the “blue profound” of a small but exquisite speedwell petal. The final song tells of how a bleak winter transforms into a welcome spring, concluding how “…life does not forget”.

Apart from the opening Green Rain, the other four songs have the poems retitled, all being linked by a reference to a colour. The group title, Secret Joys, alludes to the original title of the fourth set poem: The Secret Joy.

—John Mitchell, October 2023

Sample pages

(Click to enlarge)

		Composer	Title	Vocal range	Forces	Total duration
		John Mitchell	Secret Joys Five Mary Webb Songs for voice and piano	C♯ to F♯'	Voice, Piano	7½ mins
	#	Composer	Movement		Forces	Duration
	1	John Mitchell Words: Mary Webb	1. Green Rain		Voice, Piano	1¼ mins
	2		2. White Hawthorn			1¾ mins
	3		3. Scarlet Fire			1 minute
	4		4. Blue Speedwell			1½ mins
	5		5. Brown Oak			1¾ mins

Catalogue code: FM271 • Published: 12th November 2023
Entry last updated: 12th November 2023