This CD is the fourth and final from the Albion Records label featuring folk song arrangements by Ralph Vaughan Williams. All in all, there are 81 songs, 53 of which had never before been released on vinyl or in digital form. Most of the songs on Volume 4 come from a collection of Newfoundland folk songs collected on location by Maud Karpeles in 1929 and 1930. During her fieldwork, Newfoundland was
… still in British hands. Only in 1949 was the colony added to Canada. Ethnologists often feel that they are just too late. It happened to Alan Lomax when he recorded the singing of prisoners at Parchman Farm in Mississippi in 1947. Karpeles, too, was told time and again that she was actually too late. She nevertheless collected some 89 songs, 15 of which were arranged by Vaughan Williams. In those 15, the emphasis is rather one-sided on sad themes, which was to be expected from the composer of Bredon Hill (from On Wenlock Edge). Karpeles herself found sufficient justification for her entire career in the discovery of She's like the swallow alone. (HJ)more
