The five movements are:

1. Monday's Child
2. The Owl and the Pussycat
3. Windy Nights
4. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
5. Sing a Song of Sixpence

The first song is based on "Monday's Child", a fortune-telling song and nursery rhyme. The text of the second song is "The Owl and the Pussycat", a nonsense-poem by Edward Lear published in 1871. The third song is based on a poem, "Windy Nights", by Robert Louis Stevenson. The text for the fourth song is "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", a nursery rhyme and evening prayer. The fifth song uses the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence". The composer noted: "The Five Childhood lyrics are a kind of 'homage' to the world of children. I chose for my texts some of the rhymes and verses remembered from my earliest years, and set them to music as simply as I could—though the last of the five, which uses a familiar nursery tune, contains a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek elaboration."^[4] The pieces were described by a reviewer for Gramophone as "delightful compositions",^[5] while another reviewer noted "the energy and sharp-witted invention that characterize these youthful pieces".^[6] The work was first published in 1974 by Oxford University Press.^[7][8]

The songs were recorded in a collection of Rutter's secular works titled Fancies, performed under his direction by the Cambridge Singers, together with the summer songs of the same name, the winter songs When Icicles Hang,^[1] and the instrumental Suite Antique.^[1] They were recorded in 2002 on an album of secular music by Rutter, with Nicol Matt conducting the Nordic Chamber Choir.^[5]

References