We'll to the Woods No More (John Ireland)

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We'll to the Woods No More is a song cycle for voice and piano composed in 1928 by John Ireland. It consists of settings of two poems by A. E. Housman (1859–1936) and a concluding piece for solo piano named after a third.^[1]

A performance takes about 8 minutes. The poems are:^[2]

"We'll to the Woods No More" (Last Poems (1922), unnumbered preface)
"In Boyhood" ("When I would muse in boyhood"; Last Poems, No. XXXII)
"Spring Will Not Wait" ("'Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town"; A Shropshire Lad (1896), No. XXXIX)

John France has written, "The mood of this cycle is typically a deep sense of the fragility of life, love and friendship that so influenced both men."^[3] Rob Barnett has written of the piano piece "Spring Will Not Wait" that, "It is in Ireland’s typically elusive, wanderingly ambivalent tonal palette."^[4]

References

^ "List of works – T to Y". The John Ireland Trust. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
^ "We'll to the woods no more: Song Cycle by John (Nicholson) Ireland (1879–1962)". recmusic.org. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
^ France, John. "John Ireland (1879–1972): The Songs". musicweb-international.com. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
^ Barnett, Rob. "John Ireland (1879–1972): The Songs". musicweb-international.com. Retrieved 29 April 2015.

John Ireland

Piano

Piano Concerto (1930)

Solo

First Rhapsody (1905?/1906?)
Decorations (1913)
The Holy Boy (1913)
The Almond Tree (1913)
Preludes for Piano (1913–1915)
Rhapsody (1915)
London Pieces (1917–1920)
The Towing Path
Leaves from a Child's Sketchbook (1918)
The Darkened Valley (1920)
Two Pieces for Piano (1921)
Prelude in E-flat major (1924)
Two Pieces for Piano (1925)
Sonatina (1926–1927)
Ballad (1929)
Two Pieces for Piano (1929–1930)
Ballade of London Nights (1930)
Month's Mind (1935)
Green Ways (1937)
Sarnia: An Island Sequence (1940–1941)
Three Pastels (1941)

Vocal and choral

"Love Unknown" (1925)

Song cycles	Songs of a Wayfarer (1911) Two Songs (1916) Two Songs (1918) Mother and Child (1918) Three Songs to Poems by Arthur Symons (1919) Two Songs (1920) The Land of Lost Content (1921) Three Songs to Poems by Thomas Hardy (1925) Three Songs (1926) Two Songs (1928) We'll to the Woods No More (1928) Songs Sacred and Profane (1931) Five Sixteenth-Century Poems (1938)