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, see photo - 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 an 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 this special a cappella version. There are a number of changes from the earlier TTBB version with piano, so I’ve decided to leave that on the website as well.