Try Me, Good King

Try me, good King is a group of five songs drawn from the final letters and gallows speeches of the first five wives of King Henry VIII. The cycle is a psychologically intense monodrama that presents technical challenges to both performers. Each song is named after one of the five wives, and is interwoven with lute songs composed during the Elizabethan period. In the words of the composer, these interwoven lute songs 'create a tapestry of unsung works which comment on the real situation of each doomed queen'.