As I Rode Out

This is a rowdy and lusty setting of a favourite song from the Coventry Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The music has tremendous swing to its stride, and a folksong quality to which, by the use of judicious pauses, the composer adds the feel of impromptu singing. A certain exaggeration might even be called for in performance, for example in the robustly canonic second verse, with no loss of humour or atmosphere. The music draws too on the cumulative energy of unison and octave unaccompanied singing and, apart from a brief episode suggestive of the shepherds' pipes, that is how it proceeds to its rousing conclusion.