The Ballad of Semmerwater

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs was a prolific and versatile English composer of the 20th century. Gibbs is best known for his output of songs, but he also wrote a considerable amount of music for the amateur choirsthathe conducted. His reputation as a song-writer largely lies in his natural gift for text setting he insisted on giving priority to the words over the music and had very clear musical ideas on what a song should be. Theseprinciples prevailed when he set William Watson's poem about a splendid city which stood by a lake and which vanished without trace to music. The Ballad Of Semmerwater is arranged here for Voice withPianoaccompaniment.