Bird rounds

These four rounds about birds can be performed as a set or separately. Linnet and Sparrow are based on canons by Beethoven and Caldara respectively, to which poems by Paul Dunbar and Wordsworth have been fitted. Skylark and Eagle are original compositions by Sheena Phillips, based on words by Shelley and Tennyson respectively. They vary in difficulty: the first three are well within the compass of a range of choirs but Eagle is chromatic and challenging.

All four species represented are suffering major declines both in the UK and worldwide — as cannily foreshadowed even in the 19th century text of Sparrow.