In this work, ‘a union of inspired poetry with inspired music,’ to quote Rosa Newmarch, we have the composer at his best. It presents in a musical setting no less than 54 stanzas of ‘The Rubaiyat,’ about half the book, for a tremendous chorus, three solo voices and a large orchestra. In his music Bantock has given these Epicurean drinking-songs of Mohammedan Persia their inner spiritual significance. He emphasizes their dramatic quality as songs of revolt against Koranic law and idealizes them as a defiance of reason and nature against religious bigotry. The work is inordinately long, judged by ordinary standards, and difficult of performance; yet the composer’s tendency toward frequent modulation is always balanced by a sure sense of beauty and proportion. From the muezzin’s call to prayer at sunset ‘the work moves on from mood to mood, from contrast to contrast--conflict and repose, love and death, regnant glory and the dust of oblivion--in a wonderful and strenuous comment on human existence.’ The more directly lyric stanzas are assigned to the Poet (tenor) and the Beloved (contralto); the philosophical reflections on the eternal ‘Yea and Nay’ of human existence are placed in the mouth of the Philosopher (baritone). The love duets, especially ‘When you and I behind the veil,’ are rich in haunting charm, and the choruses glow with vivid color. Bantock’s musical Orientalism is not a mere matter of externals, of rhythms, of vocal arabesques and percussion-effects. It goes far deeper and interprets the soul of the Orient as Pierre Loti has done in his prose poems. And on hearing Bantock’s ‘Rubaiyat’ it seems, as Mrs. Newmarch beautifully puts it, ‘as though the northern wind had scattered a fresh shower of rose leaves upon the grave of Omar Khayyam.’ Nor has Bantock been insensible to the appeal of the myths of ancient Hellas. A ‘choral symphony’ set to Swinburne’s beautiful ‘Atalanta in Calydon,’ in twenty parts, _a cappella_, performed 1912 at the Manchester Festival, bears witness to the fact. It is said to be the most difficult work ever written for unaccompanied chorus, the final movement in particular taxing the voices to the utmost. In it the composer has blazed new paths of choral effect by means of groupings of variously constituted choirs, and among other of its movements a _scherzo_ for female voices is especially praised. Bantock’s other secular choral works include: ‘The Time Spirit,’ a rhapsody for chorus and orchestra (first heard at Gloucester Festival, 1904); three ‘Cavalier Tunes’ for male chorus, ‘God Save the King,’ for chorus and orchestra, and various choruses for female and mixed voices, among which might be mentioned ‘On Himalay,’ all fine examples of original and harmonious part-writing.