Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

300 traditional songs, inc sheet music with full piano accompaniment & lyrics.

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	210	OUR FAMILIAR SONGS. f                    Ritard tspress.
	THE IVY GREEN. Charles Dickens was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, England, February 7, 1812, and died at his place of Gad's Hill, near Rochester, Kent, on the 9th of June, 1870. He wrote several lyrics, of which " The Ivy Green," which appeared originally in the " Pickwick Papers," is the only one that has become familiar. It was first published, as a song, in this country, and when a London publisher wished to reproduce it in England, Dickens refused to allow him to do so, unless he paid ten guineas to the composer, Hexry Russell. In his melody, it seems to me, the composer has failed to catch the poet's meaning. Dickens's words are as sombre and tender as the vine that deepens the shadows and softens the ruggedness of decaying grandeur; while Russell's music is as free and sturdy as the heartiest oak.