Editing Arnold Bax (section)

===Vocal music===
The critic Peter Latham remarked that he was surprised that Bax had never set any of Yeats's poems to music. Bax replied, "What, I? I should never dare!". Latham added that Bax's sensitiveness to poetic values made him "painfully aware of the violence that even the best musical setting must do to a poem". Eventually this feeling caused him to give up song-writing completely.<ref name=b11>Bliss ''et al'', p. 11</ref>
[[File:Bax's-poets.jpg|thumb|left|alt=four head and shoulders portraits of British poets|Among Bax's settings were poems by (clockwise from top left) [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]], [[Robert Burns|Burns]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]] and [[James Joyce|Joyce]]]]
At the start of his composing career, songs, together with piano music, formed the core of Bax's work. Some of the songs, mainly the early ones, are conspicuous for the virtuosity of their piano parts, which tend to overwhelm the voice.<ref name=Hold233>Hold, p. 233</ref> ''Grove'' contrasts the virtuoso accompaniment of "The Fairies" (1905) with  the simpler "The White Peace" (1907), one of his most popular songs. The musical analyst Trevor Hold writes that the piano "goes berserk" in "Glamour" (1920).<ref>Hold, p. 219</ref> Among the poets whose verses Bax set were his brother Clifford, [[Robert Burns|Burns]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]], [[Thomas Hardy|Hardy]], [[A. E. Housman|Housman]],  [[James Joyce|Joyce]], [[J. M. Synge|Synge]] and [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]].<ref name=grove/> The composer himself singled out for mention in his ''[[Who's Who (UK)|Who's Who]]'' article "A Celtic Song-Cycle" (1904) to words by "Fiona Macleod" (a pen name of the poet [[William Sharp (writer)|William Sharp]]).<ref name=who>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U234539 "Bax, Sir Arnold Edward Trevor"], ''Who Was Who'', Oxford University Press, 2014, retrieved 16 September 2015 {{ODNBsub}}</ref> Among the post-war songs, Hold considers Bax's "In the Morning" (1926) to be one of the best of all settings of Housman's works, "and it makes you wish that Bax had made further explorations into the Shropshire landscape."<ref>Hold, p. 227</ref> Hold classes that song, together with "Across the Door" (1921), "Rann of Exile" (1922) and "Watching the Needleboats" (1932), as "truly modern, 20th-century masterpieces of song".<ref name=Hold233 />

Bax wrote a substantial number of choral works, mostly secular but some religious. He was a nominal member of the [[Church of England]], but in the view of the critic Paul Spicer, "None of Bax's choral music can be described as devotional or even suitable for church use{{space}}… Here is a secular composer writing voluptuous music."<ref name=spicer/> The choral works with religious texts include his largest-scale unaccompanied vocal piece, ''Mater ora Filium'' (1921), inspired by [[William Byrd]]'s [[Mass for Five Voices|Five Part Mass]]; it is a setting of a medieval carol from a manuscript held by [[Balliol College, Oxford]].<ref name=spicer>Spicer, Paul (1993). Notes to Chandos CD 9139, OCLC 29688294</ref> The composer [[Patrick Hadley]] considered it "an unsurpassed example of modern unaccompanied vocal writing".<ref>Bliss ''et al'', p. 9</ref>  Bax's other choral works include settings of words by [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]] (''Enchanted Summer'', 1910), [[Henry Vaughan]] (''The Morning Watch'', 1935), [[John Masefield|Masefield]] (''To Russia'', 1944), and [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]] (''Epithalamium'', 1947).<ref name=grove/>