Click on arrow to hear the song performed by Derek B. Scott, Professor of Critical Musicology, University of Leeds, to his own piano accompaniment c. 1980.
According to Professor Scott, this twentieth-century ballad turns away from a concern with morality and tends to dwell on emotion for its own sake. This song offers an example of the shift in ethos, as a reaction to Victorian morality took root. However, it becomes difficult to counterbalance the accusation that expression of sentiment was turning into self-indulgence.
Bibliography
Scott, Derek B. The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour. 2nd ed. Aldershot, Hampshire; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.
Last modified 25 September 2007