The Curlew is a song cycle by Peter Warlock on poems by William Butler Yeats. It is generally considered one of the composer's finest works.
It was written between 1920 and 1922 for singer and an unusual accompanying group of flute, cor anglais and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello). Warlock completed the work in Cefn Bryntalch, his family home in Llandyssil , near Montgomery in Wales.
There are four songs, with a short instrumental interlude. The poems they are based on (with the first line in parentheses) are:
- "He Reproves the Curlew" ("O Curlew, cry no more in the air")
- "The lover mourns for the loss of love" ("Pale brows, still hands and dim hair")
- "The Withering of the Boughs" ("I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds:")
- Interlude
- "He Hears the Cry of the Sedge" ("I wander by the edge of this desolate lake")
The first, second and last of these poems were taken from The Wind among the Reeds (pub. 1899), and the Withering of the Boughs from In the Seven Woods (pub. 1904).
There is a lengthy instrumental introduction to the first song, in which the cry of the curlew is represented by the cor anglais and the peewit by the flute. The songs, which concern lost love, are melancholy in mood.
A number of motivic elements recurr throughout the songs dependent on the point in the text; a structural basis also present in many others of Warlock's songs.
The cycle lasts around twenty-five minutes.