The song is by Ivor Gurney to a poem by the Elizabethan poet, John Fletcher. It’s partly in praise of sleep’s restorative powers, but also, and more disturbingly, about sleep as an escape from melancholy, as if into drugged bliss.
‘Come, sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving/Lock me in delight awhile;/Let some pleasing dream beguile/All my fancies, that from thence/I may feel an influence,All my powers of care bereaving.
Tho’ but a shadow, but a sliding,/Let me know some little joy./We, that suffer long annoy, Are contented with a thought/Thro’ an idle fancy wrought:/O let my joys have some abiding.’
It is sung, beautifully, by Janet Baker, with Martin Isepp at the piano. It is an early recording, from 1966, when she was in her early thirties and her voice fresh and youthful. The original LP was released in England on the Saga bargain budget label. I bought it for ten shillings. Saga made a lot of very interesting recordings at the time - including Janet Baker’s other classic, her first recording of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben. The problem with Saga is that everything was done on a shoestring. They didn’t always get their recordings quite right - in an otherwise good recording you might hear a moment where the sound drops out, or the pitch wavers. And the quality of their vinyl pressings was awful - clicks and pops, and background hiss. I’m glad to say that this recording if from a recent CD re-release - the stereo separation is a bit eccentric.
And wonderful for all that.
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