Four Portraits
(1956) for Baritone, clarinet, and piano
Duration: 7 minutes
Text: Sir John Davies
Commissioned by Geoffrey Walls

World Premiere: 10 December 1962, London

Publisher:  Novello & Co Ltd

Composer Note:

This work was written in 1956. It is based on a series of poems by Sir John Davies (1569-1626) which are cynical portraits of important personages of the time.

TEXT:

The Phisition

I study to uphold the slippery state of man
Who dies when we have done the best and all we can.
From practice and from books I draw my learned skill
Not from the known receipt or 'pothecarie's bill.
The earth my faults doth hide, the world my cures doth see
What youth and time effects is oft ascribed to me.

The Lawyer

The law my calling is; my robe, my tongue, my pen,
Wealth and opinion gain and make me judge of men.
The known dishonest cause I never did defend
Nor spun out suits in length. But wished and sought an end
Nor counsel did betray, nor of both parties take;
Nor ever took I fee, for which I never spake.

The Divine

My calling is divine, and I from God am sent.
I will no chop-church be, nor pay my patron rent,
Nor yield to sacrilege. But like the kind true mother,
Rather would lose the child than part it with another.
Much wealth I will not seek, nor worldly masters serve,
So to grow rich and fat while my poor flock doth starve.

The Courtier

Long have I lived in Court yet learned not all this while
To sell poor suitors smoke nor where to hate, to smile,
Superiors to adore inferiors to despise.
To fly from such as fall, to follow such as rise,
To cloak a poor desire under rich array.
Nor to aspire by vice though 'twere the quicker way.

Recording:

Four Portraits
Stephen Varcoe, baritone
English Serenata
Clarinet Classics CC0039

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