Soporific ANd Sacharine Yet Transcendent
Sweet And Low
Gurt Gasworks Concert, Bristol Beacon, 7th July 2012
This Victorian lullaby is a setting to music of Tennyson’s poem Sweet and Low by Sir Joseph Barnby. It was first published in 1863.
Barnby (1838-1896) was a composer and conductor, principally of choral music. He wrote one oratorio, Rebekah, and many smaller-scale sacred works including psalms, anthems, motets and 246 hymn tunes. However, it is for Sweet and Low, one of the few secular part-songs that he wrote, that he is best remembered today.