Mellstock Band: Songs of Thomas Hardy's Wessex

Sally Dexter, Julie Murphy, Ian Giles, Andy Turner with The Mellstock Band

A comprehensive collection of the songs of Hardy’s Wessex characters imported from England and featuring The Mellstock Band, the guest performers in The Christmas Revels in Cambridge, MA this year. The versions of the songs are form sources as close as possible in time and place to Hardy’s homeland. Varying degrees of accompaniment are used here, reflecting the musical culture Hardy knew as a boy. Fiddle and cello were his family’s instruments and his characters also play flutes and oboes (including the vox humana – the English version of the baroque tenor oboe).

PLAYLIST

The Foggy Dew

Jockey to the Fair/Dame Durden

The Mistletoe Bough

Cupid's Garden

Queen Eleanor's Confession

The Spotted Cow

The Seeds of Love

The Barley Mow

The Prentice Boy

I Have Parks, I Have Hounds

Break o' the Day

The Sheepshearing Song

The Tailor's Breeches

The Downhills of Life

I Wish, I Wish

Joan's Ale

The Outlandish Knight

Such a Beauty I Did Grow

The Banks of Allan Water

King Arthur Had Three Sons

The Light of the Moon