Clive Osgood’s output is clearly important to Convivium Records; I listed previous reviews in my review of his Christmas disc. Now it is on to folk song, beginning with Three Folksong Arrangements for unaccompanied choir. The three are connected via a loose narrative of a sailor, his travels, and his loves. “The Crystal Spring” is a folk song originally collected by Cecil Sharp in 1908. The sopranos take the lead in this tale of (promised) male constancy told from a female perspective; this shifts to the male seamen of “Spanish Ladies,” another Sharp–sourced folk tune, now robust and with the swing of a dinking song. Polyphony digs in; the soprano line seems to remain up high for long stretches, beautifully given here. Finally for this short set, “The Drowned Lover,” in which a woman finds the body of her sailor lover on the beach. She instantly dies of grief (those were the days) and the two are buried in a churchyard, a grave their “marriage bed.” There is an understandable sense of sadness pervading this song; what is most notable, though, is Osgood’s harmonic workings. Identifiably in the English tradition, they have real individuality, an individuality that becomes stronger the more of this composer’s music one hears. How beautiful, too, the approach to the final cadence, rooted by deep basses. 

The Three Folksong Hymn Arrangements focus on the birth of Jesus. “What Child is This?” is based on the famous Greensleeves tune, heard in an absolutely lovely harmonization. The setting for eight-part choir results in real richness and a deepening of the tune’s core melancholy; a lovely descant is added, too. “I heard the voice of Jesus say” is set to a folk tune located by Vaughan Willliams; some will know it from that composer’s Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus. Osgood maintains the piece’s modal basis, adding some nice twists of his own. A more recent hymn (from 1973) forms the basis of “An Upper Room,” a soft meditation on the themes raised by the Last Supper (“love, sacrifice, humanity” according to the booklet). The melody is older, though, the folk tune O Waly, Waly. The verse wherein the tenors carry the melody is particularly striking, and delivered with the utmost silken legato by the members of Polyphony. 

Dating from 2015, the Songs from Three Counties was commissioned by Haslemere Music Society; Haslemere straddles three counties (Hampshire, West Sussex, and Surrey). This is a cycle of five folk songs for choir and orchestra, in which Polyphony is joined by the Britten Sinfonia, one of the UK’s most inventive groups. The five songs are connected via a maritime theme, the settings ostensibly simple. Although Osgood leaves the material largely intact, he deploys much imagination in his scorings and occasional countermelodies. The male voices of Polyphony embody the characters of nicely lusty sailors departing on the ship of the title, the Priveer. They seem particularly jolly, too. A solo violin features in “The Royal Oak,” which despite its quiet beginnings goes on to depict battle in a curious mix of the filmic and the hymnic. A 1906 folk tune is used for “The Mermaid.” A winding clarinet seems to represent the seductive locks of this harbinger of doom before the final “The Ship in Distress,” itself a mini-story, portrays just those misfortunes. 

While Songs from Three Counties might be the most ambitious piece here, it is not the most successful; the folk song and the “folksong hymn” arrangements make much more of a mark. Performances and recording are uniformly excellent, though, in this enjoyable romp through English folk tunes.