Dirge For Fidele

Vaughan Williams made many settings of texts from Shakespeare throughout his life. This one, the Dirge for Fidele, was written for two Voices with Piano Accompaniment in 1922 as a stand-alone song. Its text is oneofShakespeare’s many celebrated songs, ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun’ including the lines ‘Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust’ from Cymbeline.Perhaps one of music’s least dirge-like dirges,theaccompaniment is soothing and the Vocal lines soaring. It was sung at Sir Laurence Olivier’s funeral at Westminster Abbey in 1989.