Anon in Love is a cycle of six songs by William Walton, originally for tenor and guitar, setting anonymous poems from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
[1] In 1959 the tenor Peter Pears and the guitarist Julian Bream, who were giving joint recitals at that time, approached Walton to write a new set of songs for them.
Pears was known among other things for his performances of the English lute song repertory of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and for his appearances in the operas of his life partner Benjamin Britten.
[4] The music critic of The Times wrote that although some of Walton's recent works had received a mixed press, "these settings of sixteenth and seventeenth century love Poems must surely he universally welcomed.
[5] The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph said that the cycle revealed a compactness of invention that the composer had not invoked since Façade, and added "it is an unexpected delight to find Walton so successful in this field".