Idylls by Stuart Richard Brown

The idea of writing a set of songs for tenor and piano, based on Tennyson’s poems, had first occurred to me in 1986. I wrote out a few first sketches, but then a change of job resulted in me moving to another town quite some distance away. I lost contact with the tenor for whom I had first envisaged the work and in consequence lost the motivation to continue working on the songs. They lay dormant until 2014, when I got to know the London-based Chinese soprano Chen Wang. I offered to compose a song cycle for her, she liked the idea and my earlier song sketches became the basis of the new project.

By this time I was working in Hanoi, Vietnam, so one of the songs ('Love is and was my Lord and King') was written sitting at a hotel desk! 'Ring out, wild bells' matched my mood at the time, so it became the first song in the set.

I called the set Idylls as a nod of respect to Tennyson's epic 'The Idylls of the King'. It was completed on 8th February 2015, nearly thirty years after I had first jotted down some thoughts about it … and from the comments I have received from reviewers, performers and audiences alike, it is all the better for being so well matured.

It was first performed on 12th January 2019 by Chen Wang and Jonathan Ellis.

Sheet music is available for most stuff on this page. I'm an all-round musician, composer, conductor and polyglot, with international experience spanning 44 countries, who believes that barriers are there to be torn down and that the world is full of lovely people.