A composer who writes songs arguably allows us into a very personal side of his or her character. An instrumental composition gives us access to a composer’s imagination and invention as far as the composer chooses to let us see, but a song shows a composer’s highly personal response to a text – we hear how the composer reacts to another facet of creativity. We are not confined to the composer’s own thoughts, and the best songs take us into a composer’s creative mind. Scott’s compositional style reflected the colour and richness of his ideas. The songs on this CD cover a period from his early 20s to when he was about 40.

A few of Scott’s songs became extraordinarily popular: they undoubtedly overshadowed the rest of his work. In many of his songs, he explored and develope d his harmonic lang uage, and set the mood and character of the text, so that the best can be explored at many levels. Some of them seem simple, but hide, as Edmund Rubbra, a composer and a student of Scott, put it, ‘a good de al of artifice’. Repeated listenings allo w their richness of detail to sink in, and they become more and more rewarding. - © 2018 Valerie Langfield