AustLit

Author's note: Stow describes the original inspiration for this work as follows: 'The poems forming the text of this work were suggested by a miniature mechanical organ playing eight tunes, once the property of George III ... One imagined the King, in his purple flannel dressing-gown and ermine night-cap, struggling to teach birds to make the music which he could so rarely torture out of his flute and harpsichord. Or trying to sing with them, in that ravaged voice, made almost inhuman by day-long soliloquies ... The songs are to be understood as the King's monologue while listening to his birds perform, and incorporate some sentences actually spoken by George III.'

Stow has explained the context of his libretti as follows: 'I wrote the Libretti of Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot to be complementary. The Mad King is desperately tragic, and Peter Maxwell Davies's music often mocks the King, and one can't help laughing, and myself I find that distressing. So I wrote Miss Donnithorne as a companion piece, at which one could laugh with a clear conscience.' (A. J. Hassall, 'Interview with Randolph Stow', Australian Literary Studies 10 (1982): 322-323).

Dedication: To Sir Steven Runciman