Three animal songs

For baritone and piano, texts by Stevie Smith, Thomas Hardy and Walt Whitman, duration 7 minutes. Three songs as follows: I) The Singing Cat (text by Stevie Smith); II) Mourned (text from Last Words to a Dumb Friend by Thomas Hardy); III) Last Words (text from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman). This work was premiered on 2 October 2000 by Gerald Finley (baritone) and Julius Drake (piano) at the Wigmore Hall, London. A performance given by Gerald Finley with Antonio Pappano (piano) at the Royal Opera House in 2020 is available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhnGXyvpClk (beginning 47:13)