Songs For All Seasons

Today's Song of the Day was written for the theme of St. George's Day, which was yesterday, but it can be used for any April concert as it is a setting of Robert Browning's famous poem "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad". Robert Browning (1812 – 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. By the age of 12, Browning had written a book of poetry, which he later destroyed for want of a publisher. After attending one or two private schools he was educated at home by a tutor, using the resources of his father's 6000-book strong library. By 14 he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin. He became an admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley, whom he followed in becoming an atheist and a vegetarian. At 16, he studied Greek at University College London, but left after his first year. His parents' evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford or Cambridge University, both then open o...

Happy St. George's Day! Of all the 77 songs in this collection, the one I am sharing with you today is one of my favourites. It almost wrote itself, seemingly springing from my pencil fully-formed! I wrote the whole thing in a single day - the quickest of all of them. I had visions the entire time of a whole football pitch of England fans singing this. Before you laugh, football took Nessun Dorma to its heart in 1990 - and that was chosen simply for the fact that the lyrics contain the word "vincerò" meaning "I will win" in Italian. So, if there are any people out there on whichever committee chooses football theme tunes - check this one out for England's next big tournament! I stole a tiny snippet of a very famous (public domain) hymn tune for part of this song - see if you can spot it! St. George was not actually English. According to holy tradition, he was a soldier in the Roman army. Of Cappadocian Greek origin, he became a member of the Praetorian Guard...