A short reflection on the elegiac English pastoral tradition, giving Charles Wilfred Orr particular prominence and seeing his A Cotswold Hill Tune as part of the same landscape of folk memory, restraint, melancholy and tenderness found in Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Gurney and Finzi.
From kings and judges to prophets and people, the Bible records a changing pattern of authority. Later writings speak of an inward covenant, expressed in George Herbert’s poetry and Vaughan Williams’ music: “My God and King.”