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Programme Note

After writing the choral work Spells (1975) specifically with Jane Manning in mind, Bennett decided to follow it with these songs for voice and piano, which are here receiving their first performance.

The story goes that Deborah Churchill was hanged in 1708 for shielding her lover in a duel. His opponent was killed, her lover fled to Holland, and so, according to the law of the time, she was hanged in his stead. According to the chronicle of the event:

'Though she died at peace with God, this malefactor could never understand the justice of her sentence, to the last moment of her life.'

Poem by Edith Sitwell