Charles Stanford - The Blue Bird (BEST on YouTube)

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★★★ My playlist with English choral pieces:
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Charles Villiers Stanford (1852 - 1924):
THE BLUE BIRD

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer, music teacher and conductor. Born to a well-off and highly musical family in Dublin, Stanford was educated at the University of Cambridge before studying music in Leipzig and Berlin. In 1882, he was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life. From 1887 he was also Professor of Music at Cambridge. As a teacher, Stanford was sceptical about modernism, and based his instruction chiefly on classical principles as exemplified in the music of Brahms. Among his pupils were rising composers whose fame went on to surpass his own, such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. His best-remembered pieces are his choral works for church performance, chiefly composed in the Anglican tradition.

The bluebirds are a group of medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous bird which live in North and Central America. Bluebirds have come to symbolize not only freedom, as birds typically do, but also hope and happiness. Funny enough, many of the musicians who have sung about Bluebirds are British, which is a bit odd given that Bluebirds don't live in Britain. However, if Bluebirds knew this wonderful piece of music composed by Charles Stanford in their honour, they might consider emigrating.

BBC Singers sang this song on 8 September 2018 at the Last Night of the Proms in Royal Albert Hall, London.

The lake lay blue below the hill.
O'er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.

The sky above was blue at last,
The sky beneath me blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
It caught his image as he flew.

(Mary E. Coleridge)

Tuuli Lindeberg (soprano)
Lumen Valo, Finland (2001)

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★★★ My playlist with English choral pieces:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zBcoGv_ic8&list=PLCby7t-aPVUlH5zVHPG2w8xO437TCVf1j