The music was originally written in 1969, for my mother who sang the soprano line, together with her friend, Thea Tagget, contralto, who were both principals with the Plymouth Gilbert & Sullivan Fellowship. The poem I initially set was by a leading English poet, but I have had occasion to substitute my own text, which isn’t nearly as good, but to which I do own the copyright! In fact it was an interesting exercise to add text to a given melody, rather than the other way round, which is the usual order of things.

Recently I received an email from David Saslav, who asked whether the duet might be re-arranged for other voice combinations, especially male voice choir, as David sings in Musaic - a TTBB Chamber Choir in the San Francisco Bay Area. David has his own most interesting website where, amongst other things, he includes some of his own compositions.

I have since made this arrangement for TTBB, but unfortunately overlooked the fact that Musaic is an a cappella ensemble. David has now pointed this out to me, and suggested that, with a little tweaking, here and there, the piano could be dispensed with, and this is what I have now done, with a special a cappella version.

Rather than delete this present accompanied TTBB version altogether, I have decided to leave it where it is. Way back in 1972, I was asked to form a Plymouth Police Choir (see photo), which I did, and where I was their musical director for some ten years. I’ve decided to rededicate this version to them, and hopefully they may well perfom it in this arrangement, sometime!