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Created with Myriad's Harmony Assistant-Virtual Singer.
This is a work I started end of July and finished early
September 2004. At the time I began it, there was no intention of using
the old "Westron Wynde" tune but that evolved after a suggestion had
been made in my Delian discussion group by its moderator, Joseph Dillon
Ford, about using it in a project. I didn't eventually join the project
but decided the tune would fit in with what I already composed.
The old tune, was quite well-known in the English
Renaissance (Tudor period) and, despite its somewhat risqué text, was
the basis for several "Westron Wynde" Masses, particularly of John
Taverner (1490-1545), Christopher Tye (c.1505 - 1573 ) and John
Sheppard (c.1520-c.1560). It is, in fact, possible that Taverner wrote
the original tune. (He is not to be confused with the modern composer,
Sir John Tavener.) How the words fit the tune is also unknown; they are
as follows in modern English:
Western wind when will
thou blow
the small rain down may rain
Christ, if my love were in my arms
and I in my bed again.
Stravinsky set this text to his own music in his "Cantata".
