Customer Reviews

The Lark in the Clear Air: Traditional Songs

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In this review I am going to be exceptionally candid! This CD is a wonderfully arranged and performed set of traditional songs that will be treasured by any lover of this delicate yet vigorous music. I was a child of post war England in a poor suburb of South East England and our music teacher used to make us sing these songs which came from The National Song Book and from the folk song collectors, notably Vaughan Williams who put so much of this national flavor into his two collections, 'The English Hymnal' and 'Songs of Praise'. Before our generation the BBC had set up a radio programme called 'Listen with Mother' which we followed the established tradition of listening to them in those years of austerity (its funny you know, but we did not seem to get bored like they do today) on November evenings when the pea souper fogs swirled around the blue mercury lamps as the coal glowed orange in the grate. This music transported us to May mornings, harvesting, landscapes peopled with grenadiers, young love sick swains tip toeing in forbidden rooms at night etc. from these bleak afternoons and gave us the promise of the return of the season when we will be able to walk the Downs under blue skies once more. They also made us think that we were part of a continuum of being young, loving, having children and growing old and dying on this misty offshore island as hundred of generations had done before us. This self-consciousness of these characteristics that made us English and in their understated passion they revealed to us the promises of adulthood together with its victories, disillusionments and inevitable tragedies. Alas, the powers that dictate the conventional wisdom today have consigned these songs to the trash basket of history in the name of multiculturalism and globalism. The songs are not sung today as they appear too ethnocentric in a pluralistic society for our contemporary captains of society. This is a shame for those of us with no real English blood could still participate and enjoy these lovely songs that summon up the freshness of a spring morning or the pangs of a spurned lover in a few lines of beautifully stated verse. These are universal feelings that just happened to be in an English setting, which was where we were! The arrangements here are sublime, particularly 'She moved through the Fair' which always moves me to tears. The subject 'What are the English?' is a current topic for the UK is still settling down after Devolution and finding its own identity. They could do worse than playing 'The Lark in the Clear Air' to answer this question tout court. Please buy, but be warned: this stuff can be dangerously upsetting in its waves of nostalgia. It is like meeting a long lost (and forgotten) friend. That is an (almost lost) part of yourself.

This is a collection of Irish, Scottish, and English folk songs beautifully caressed by The Cambridge Singers under the masterful direction of John Rutter. He seems to possess an uncanny ability to create a uniquely lush and lyrical sound with a choir.

In listening to these songs, I find that they have the capacity to simultaneously evoke feelings of melancholy and joy, and, ultimately leave me to conclude that I have been visited by sheer beauty.

Beautifully sung under Rutter's usual masterful directions. Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron and the Dark Eyed Sailor were my favorites.

I love this CD with a passion. I've owned it since it came out new in 1993. The folk songs and traditional songs sung by the Cambridge Singers remind you of a world gone by, when life was simpler, more romantic and more humble. John Rutter is a genius. I love his choral arrangements, they bring glowing new life to these gorgeous old songs. My favorites are Dashing Away With The Smoothing Iron, the title song Lark in the Clear Air, She's Like The Swallow, The Willow Tree, The Cuckoo Song, The Bold Grenadier, Down By The Sally Gardens, Golden Slumbers (no, not the Beatle song, this one is even prettier), and The Dark Eyed Sailor, but really ALL of them are beautiful.

I see this CD is no longer in print. What a shame. See if you can track one down gently used. My own is falling apart from years of use and will probably need replacing soon.

If there was one CD I could grab if my house caught on fire it would be this one. Highly, highly recommended.

To most, this is a nostalgic trip into our youth when many of the items offered by composer and arranger John Rutter convey us back to those dusty classrooms and sunny playgrounds where once as children we sang those traditional songs of the Britain, Scotland and Ireland. The Cambridge Singers, accompanied by the London Sinfonia and conducted by John Rutter, Takes us through 24 wistful and lilting melodies from "I Know Where I'm Going" to "Golden Slumbers". The music offered, together with the printed lyrics, gives the older generation an opportunity of handing down these choral gemstones and thus ensuring our musical heritage will live on through the ages.

The Cambridge Singers sing some of the best-known and best-loved music from the British Isles so beautifully it causes a lump in my throat.

This is very typical of John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers. Superbly performed, meaning not too forceful or too delicate. Diction and tone excellent. The folk song is not necessairly as entertaining or enjoyable as some of their other repertoire, nor is it as meaningful, but it still a powerful listening experience. The money for this recording will be well spent. The arrangements, well chosen, showcase beautiful, evocative choral singing. Vaughan Williams' arrangements are best, and he is well known for his arrangements of folk songs. Rutter's are good, but his harmonies are too often predictable or saccharine.

Best are: Dashing away with the smoothing iron (5), The Dark Eyed Sailor (10), The Girl I Left Behind Me (12), Just as the tide was flowing (13), O waly, waly (15)