Folk Songs

The Choirbook Folk Songs invites you to discover the musical tradition of Great Britain and Ireland. It contains 21 arrangements of English stanzaic songs, canons and ballads for mixed choir a cappella. The songs are as varied as the stories they tell: from moving greensleeves or two hearts beat as one to graceful phrases like A rosebud by my early walk or There were three ravens to cheeky and tongue-in-cheek songs like Dashing away with the smoothing iron or The mother-in-law.

The stylistic implementation is diverse: the choir book contains original movements from the 13th century as well as arrangements of contemporary composers written exclusively for the collection. The movements are in three to five voices, the choir voices are partly divided. They are by well-known British and Irish composers such as Benjamin Britten, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Charles V. Stanford or by renowned contemporaries such as John Rutter and Carsten Gerlitz, who give the traditional songs a new musical garb.