The Binding Of The Years Piano Concerto

There's a type of traditional folk song called a "broken token" song, where a soldier/sailor returns after many years, sees a pretty girl and proposes to her.
She always refuses, because her True Love is away at the wars/at sea.
He always tells her he knew her True Love, who is now dead.
She vows she will never marry.
He says, "It's me, I was just testing your love for me," and she falls into his arms and they live Happily Ever After.
(Personally, I think she ought to smack him.)
This is a "broken token" song with a twist...

True Love

Vikki Appleton Fielden: words and music, main vocals
Ciarán Boyle: bodhran
Pete Grassby: melodeon, backing vocals
Aeron Z. Jones:  producer, guitars, mandolin, bass guitar, backing vocals, recording Aeron Z. Jones
James Singleton/Beefstock Live Sound Hire and Recording: 
recording Vikki, Ciarán and Pete
Cover photo and artwork: Vikki Appleton Fielden

Interesting Times

A humorous re-working of Child Ballad 31, "The Marriage of Sir Gawain", in which King Arthur is required to find out "what women most desire". (Summary below, for those who may not be familiar with it.)
Words and music by Vikki Appleton Fielden
Guitar by Lynne Morley 
All other instruments played by the brilliant Jon Loomes, who also engineered the sound.
BIG thanks to Lynne & Jon for making this track sound so fab/medieval! They're both also on SoundCloud, so do check them out.

SUMMARY:
Arthur, apparently some day after Christmas, had been encountered at Tarn Wadling, in the forest of Inglewood, by a bold baron armed with a club, who offered him the choice of fighting, or ransoming himself by coming back on New Year's day and bringing word what women most desire. Arthur puts this question in all quarters, and having collected many answers, in which, possibly, he had little confidence, he rides to keep his day. On the way he meets a frightfully ugly woman; she intimates that she could help him. Arthur promises her Gawain in marriage, if she will, and she imparts to him the right answer. Arthur finds the baron waiting for him at the tarn, and presents first the answers which he had collected and written down. These are contemptuously rejected. Arthur then says that he had met a lady on a moor, who had told him that a woman would have her will. The baron says that the misshapen lady on the moor was his sister, and he will burn her if he can get hold of her. Upon Arthur's return he tells his knights that he has a wife for one of them, and they ride with the king to see her, or perhaps for her to make her choice. When they see the bride, they decline the match in vehement terms, all but Gawain, who is somehow led to waive "a little foul sight and misliking." She is bedded in all her repulsiveness, and turns to a beautiful young woman. To try Gawain's compliance further, she asks him whether he will have her in this likeness by night only or only by day. Putting aside his own preference, Gawain leaves the choice to her, and this is all that is needed to keep her perpetually beautiful. For a stepmother had witched her to go on the wild moor in that fiendly shape until she should meet some knight who would let her have all her will. Her brother, under a like spell, was to challenge men either to fight with him at odds or to answer his hard question.
(This summary is from an extremely useful index of the Child Ballads by Ed de Moel: http://71.174.62.16/Demo/LongerHarvest?Text=ChildRef_31
You can find the text of the original ballad here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Child%27s_Ballads/31)

Lyrics available here: https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=168999&messages=47#4125810

Sir Gav Gets Hitched (Child Ballad 31)

Extract from 'Three Soliloquies' from Darwiniana, settings of Charles Darwin from Autobiography, Voyage of the Beagle and Origin of Species for classical guitar and baritone. This segment is a rendition of the work starting with the words "The primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man...no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.” These words can be interpreted as amongst Darwin's most 'deist', conventionally referring to the God of Nature. Other extracts will be less so. If he wrote it, it's worth considering for musical setting - edited down for musical sense but without distorting his meaning - you decide!

Picture credit:  "Antonio Campoy, CC BY 2.0 &lt;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons"

The Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics (extract, rendition)

'Hearing Your Genes Evolve' premiered at The Royal Greenwich String Quartet Festival April 2012 at The Cutty Sark performance space. A musical translation of the human DNA code.


Hearing Your Genes Evolve

Interview for BBC Radio 3 about The Binding of the Years

The Glories of the Vegetation of the Tropics (extract, rendition)

David F. Gahan

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