After a close examination of the complex compositional processes at work in it—including prime, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion of the melodic line—Brian Collins, in Peter Warlock: The Composer (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), concludes, "And wilt thou leave me thus is among Warlock's best and most significant songs. It was the last song to be composed at Eynsford and it makes thereby a fitting envoi to what was a highly productive time in his compositional life, even though is results did not quite match the sustained quality of those of the Welsh period." The wonder is that any work was accomplished during the Eynsford period—from January 1925 to autumn 1928—as the riotous weekends, when artistic and bohemian friends motored up from London to carouse and caper in madcap fashion in the cottage Warlock and E.J. Moeran maintained in the Kentish village of Eynsford, gave spur to the Warlock legend, with its plethora of genius, women, havoc, and cats. Weekdays, however, were strictly given to work, though much of it, in contrast to that of the preceding Welsh period, was absorbed by arranging Warlock's published solo songs for choral forces or string quartet accompaniment, not always to their betterment (for instance, the replacement of the chorus with string quartet in Corpus Christi is a notable failure), and producing anthologies, such as The Metamorphosis of Ajax (about privies) and Loving Mad Tom (about Tom O'Bedlam), which were patently designed to generate cash in a faltering economy. Composed in August 1928, And wilt thou leave me thus?, to a poem by Thomas Wyatt, is dedicated to Arnold Dowbiggin, a musical amateur whose interest in Warlock's songs led to a revealing correspondence with the composer. Sending a copy of the published song, Warlock wrote to Dowbiggin of the acute financial distress overtaking him, the evaporation of the market for songs, and of his intention to put aside composition for any sort of remunerative work, circumstances that drove him from the Eynsford idyll shortly thereafter. Cecil Gray saw in And wilt thou leave me thus? only "the continuation of the charming folk-song vein first exploited in Lillygay," though the widely spaced intervals of the accompaniment in the treble register, largely responsible for the distracted air of the abandoned lover, disguise the considerable compositional art in which the song is extrapolated, and which marks a turn toward the more tellingly austere manner glimpsed in The Frostbound Wood (1929) and The Fox (1930).

© Adrian Corleonis, Rovi