Luciano Berio, "Cries of London"

Notes From Decca Head 15:

Swingle II

Olive Simpson, Catherine Bott, sopranos
Carol Hall, Linda Hirst, mezzo-sopranos
John Potter, Ward Swingle, tenors
John Lubbock, David Beavan, basses

Recorded July 1976 in Decca Studio 3, West Hampstead, London
Recording producer: James Mallinson
Recording engineers: Martin Smith and Stan Goodall

These "Cries of London" for eight voices (two sopranos, two altos, two tenors, two bases) are a re-working of the composition of the same name written in 1974 for the "King's Singers" (two countertenors, one tenor, two baritones, one bass). In this new version the "Cries of London" becomes a short cycle of seven vocal pieces of a folk nature in which a simple piece regularly alternates with a musically more complex one and where the fifth "cry" is the exact repetition of the first (the text of which is also used in the third "cry"). The seventh piece, "cry of cries," is a commentary on the preceding "cries": although it uses the same melodies and the same harmonic characteristics it is musically detached as if recalling them from a distance... As a whole this short cycle can also be heard as an exercise in characterization and musical dramatization. The text is essentially a free choice of well-known phrases of vendors in the streets of Old London.

Cries 1 - 6, 7