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SONGS OF TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 251
was to hear one's own words so well sung. ''Are they your words?" the singer asked him with astonishment. " Why, I've sung that song hundreds of times, but I've never looked to see whom the words were by ! " Of this another and more personal story later on.
"It was a dream," though a song of a different type, has in its own way enjoyed almost as great a popularity as the ballads mentioned above. It was written, says Cowen, at the age of eighteen, especially for Titiens, who sang it with immense success. Other popular songs of this composer's are "The Swallow," "In the Chimney Corner," and more recently the famous " Border Ballad " and a setting of Rossetti's "A Birthday."
Of "Love can never die," one of his earlier songs, there is a characteristic little paragraph in Musical Jottings, under date of January, 1879 :—
" ' Love can never die,' new song by Frederic Cowen, is very fair indeed, and is the best song he has written since 'It was a dream.' The poetry is by F. E. Weatherly, who seems the only poet the first composers care to notice just now."
Edward German may be looked upon as the legitimate successor to Sir Arthur Sullivan in the sphere of light opera ; and, as will be remembered, he was called upon, after the latter's death, to |
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