Echoes from the Nursery
This collection of nursery rhyme compositions almost entirely dates from the early decades of the 20th century. Only Humpty Dumpty is of an earlier time.
Collecting and composing new musical settings for nursery rhymes seems to have been an offshoot of the folk song collecting mania that gripped the English-speaking world at this time. Although well known in their day, these compositions have since been largely forgotten.
The works of J. Michael Diack and Herbert Hughes found here are parodies. They derive their humour by presenting simple nursery rhymes in various styles of classical music.