According to Presto, a disc of 18 rarely-heard songs by Sir Arnold Bax, "From the Hills of Dream: the Forgotten Songs of Arnold Bax" (https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9312544--from-the-hills-of-dream-the-forgotten-songs-of-arnold-bax) is due out in early April on EM Records.
I wish this label would abandon their practice of giving their releases pretentious titles which tell you nothing about the music involved. Makes for very frustrating searches in their catalogue!
"From the Hills of Dream.."
To much to hope for that Mr. Bax set some of Machen's prose poems to music, I suppose...
At any rate I've not heard any of his songs, and only a few of his choral works - so I'm looking forward to this release.
QuoteI wish this label would abandon their practice of giving their releases pretentious titles which tell you nothing about the music involved
I heartily agree, Alan.
The collected Delphi edition of Machen only lists three actual
poems (published before 1927 anyway) but perhaps there are extracts of his fiction that invite musical setting. Hrm. IMSLP doesn't even have a category for him yet...
Bertonneau in a 2020 article about Bax does seem to suggest that a short story Bax wrote in 1913 (as Dermot o'Berne) has, coincidentally or not, Machen or Dunsany like qualities, fwiw.
As to Bax's songs, the list of his works @ Wikipedia is not quite complete, but maybe the Parlett site is still up. Both, I think, list text source where known.
For those interested, the tracklist for the disc is available here https://www.em-records.com/discs/emr-cd073-details.html as are samples, and the disc is already available to purchase from EM Records.
kind regards,
Daniel
Choosing one of the songs as the title for this release and adding 'The Forgotten Songs of Arnold Bax' as a subtitle seems pretty apt to me, and it's perhaps not the label's fault that Presto don't provide a track list or samples. Just saying...
EM are not alone in this silly fad, of course. I assume that it's intended to widen the appeal of the album in some way.
Giving a collection of songs or lieder a poetic title is no fad, nor do I think it particularly inappropriate. I have many collections of lieder, going back 25 years, with titles which are taken directly from one of the songs in the collection or from some other association with the composer or subject matter.
I take your point, John, but I wasn't thinking so much of song collections, but more generally.
Me too. EM Records do this across the board. So pretentious.