Let me tell you a sad little story, Planetluvver.

Over 40 years ago I bought a book called Elizabethan Song Book edited by Noah Greenberg, W.H.Auden, and Chester Kallman. There are some beautiful lyrics and melodies in it. I was trying to learn to play the flute at the time.

The melodies are fairly simple, more in the way of ballads or folk tunes than anything fancy. My favourite song in the book was All lookes be pale, by Thomas Campion, and there are some John Dowland songs as well.

A decade or two later I happened to hear that some of the songs would be performed on our classical radio station so I made sure that I would be at home listening to it because I really wanted to hear these songs. I had never heard any of them performed, ever.

I sat down to listen to the radio show and I was just aghast. I found out later that the style of singing is called Bel Canto.

It was overdone, overblown, totally over the top. Fair enough if the songs were opera songs, but not those beautiful, simple little songs.

It was one of the major musical disappointments of my life. Such anticipation followed by such a huge crash and burn.

Here is an example of how I *imagined* the songs would sound but alas, 'twas not to be:

King's Singers - Of all the birds