Between 1859 and 1863, the Dorset poet William Barnes published a Second Set of Poems in the Dorset Dialect. Amongst those poems was one entitled “My Orcha’d in Linden Lea”
Ralph Vaughan Williams came across the poem in 1901 and decided to set it to music. The lyrics are no longer sung in a Dorset accent and have been recorded very many times over the years since it was written. Among the recordings was one by Maddy Prior with her Carnival Band in 2010. Our arrangement is based on the 2 part arrangement by Alec Rowley from 1912.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Vaughan Williams was strongly influenced by folk music, hymns and Tudor era music. All of those influences found their way into his music and he was a key figure in giving English music a character of its own towards the end of the Romantic period of music. Vaughan Williams composed until his death aged 86 and has left a considerable legacy of orchestral and vocal music. Psalm settings of his were used in the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II. Linden Lea was in fact the first of his works to be published, in 1902.
A linden is a lime tree and a lea is a grassland or meadow.
Here is Linden Lea sung solo by Robert Tear, and here a chorus version by the Choir of New College Oxford.