The Seven Shakespeare Songs were composed during 1860-64. This present edition is based on the versions published in Volume 1 of the Second Series of Novello’s Part-Song Book, a late 19th-century series that provided an extensive repertoire of partsongs, glees and Victorian madrigals. In that edition, the metronome marks are only given in the piano part and it is quite possible that they are not Macfarren’s but a later addition.

They are therefore reproduced here only in the piano part, for ...