Winter Words, Op. 52, is a song cycle

Song cycle

A song cycle is a group of songs designed to be performed in a sequence as a single entity. As a rule, all of the songs are by the same composer and often use words from the same poet or lyricist. Unification can be achieved by a narrative or a persona common to the songs, or even, as in Schumann's...

 for tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

 and piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 by Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

.

Written in 1954, it sets eight poems by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...

 about the fleetingness of experience, which contrast brief instances (a boy’s boredom on a long train ride, the creak of an old table, a certain light in the trees in November) against the unfeeling vastness of time. Throughout the cycle Britten juxtaposes bursts of figuration against extended, repetitive chordal patterns.

The closing song, Before Life and after, is one of Hardy's most outspoken declamations on this theme. Over a slow, solemn procession of triad

Triad (music)

In music and music theory, a triad is a three-note chord that can be stacked in thirds. Its members, when actually stacked in thirds, from lowest pitched tone to highest, are called:* the Root...

ic harmonies

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

, it remembers A time there was [...] When all went well, a primal state before the disease of feeling germed, and yearns for such a time again. The setting of the final lines, which end: How long, how long?, are generally regarded to be among Britten's most haunting passages, and he revisited the work in his late orchestral piece Suite on English Folk Tunes, A Time There Was..., Op.90.

Settings

1. At Day-close in November
2. Midnight on the Great Western (or The Journeying Boy)
3. Wagtail and Baby (A Satire)
4. The little old Table
5. The Choirmaster's Burial (or The Tenor Man's Story)
6. Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches and Nightingales)
7. At the Railway Station, Upway (or The Convict and Boy with the Violin)
8. Before Life and after