A.E.Housman
Created | Updated Apr 21, 2002
A.E.Housman began his Shropshire Lad poems in 1894, preceding the events of both the Boer War and the Great War. Housman's verse has so inspired song composers since the last years of the nineteenth century, that the current total of worldwide song cycles based on Housman's poetry amounts to around 160. Although Housman himself apparently disliked the results of his verses set to music, many fine composers have responded with skill and imagination to the paramount themes of his writing, namely the transcience of life, fatality and atheism.
Bereaved of both his parents at childhood, Housman's pessimism and repressed homosexuality were able to find an expressive outlet in his literary Land of Lost Content, a visionary and even cathartic imaginary place, fuelled by childhood romancing of Shropshire as the Western Horizon.
(Literally nothing on the net of one of England's greatest poets, who inspired some of the finest English Songs in the history of music.)Worth Exploring) By Giles Davies.(Professional Singer)
Bereaved of both his parents at childhood, Housman's pessimism and repressed homosexuality were able to find an expressive outlet in his literary Land of Lost Content, a visionary and even cathartic imaginary place, fuelled by childhood romancing of Shropshire as the Western Horizon.
(Literally nothing on the net of one of England's greatest poets, who inspired some of the finest English Songs in the history of music.)Worth Exploring) By Giles Davies.(Professional Singer)
