FREDERICK FIELD BULLARD.
Bullard's setting of Tennyson's almost lurid melodrama in six stanzas, "The Sisters," has caught the bitter mixture of love and hate, and avoided claptrap climaxes most impressively.
"In the Greenwood" (op. 14) is graceful, and "A June Lullaby" has a charming accompaniment of humming rain. Bullard has set some of Shelley's lyrics for voice and harp or piano, in opus 17. "From Dreams of Thee" gets a delicious quaintness of accompaniment, while the "[Hymn of Pan]" shows a tremendous savagery and uncouthness, with strange and stubborn harmonies. Full of the same roborific virility are his settings to the songs of Richard Hovey's writing, "Here's a Health to Thee, Roberts," "Barney McGee," and the "Stein Song." These songs have an exuberance of the roistering spirit, along with a competence of musicianship that lifts them above any comparison with the average balladry. Similarly "The Sword of Ferrara," with its hidalgic pride, and "The Indifferent Mariner," and the drinking-song, "The Best of All Good Company," are all what Horace Greeley would have called "mighty interesting." Not long ago I would have wagered my head against a hand-saw, that no writer of this time could write a canon with spontaneity. But then I had not seen Bullard's three duets in canon form. He has chosen his words so happily and expressed them so easily, and with such arch raillery, that the duets are delicious. Of equal gaiety is "The Lass of Norwich Town," which, with its violin obbligato, won a prize in the Musical Record competition of 1899.
HYMN OF PAN.
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Words by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. |
Music by FRED. FIELD BULLARD, Op. 17, No. 4. |
Copyright, 1894, by Miles & Thompson.