The Tuneful Lark

This volume, edited and introduced by Robert Hoskins with realizations by David Vine, includes Arnold’s The Tuneful Lark, for soprano, flute or descant recorder and strings, Shield’s The Ploughboy, for high voice, piccolo and strings, and Storace’s The Curfew Tolls for high voice and piano or harp. The songs, the first two extracted from mid18th- century operas with village settings, in turn represent the sensuality of a young woman’s response to nature, the exuberance of a young farmhand, and the nostalgia expressed in Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.