‘Eleven-Fifty’ is the fourth of seven separate songs to various poets written byLennox Berkeley in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They were grouped together forconvenience as Opus 14 No. 2.‘The Beacon Barn’ thethird of these songs also has a text by Patrick O’Malleywho according to Tony Scotland was ‘one of the First World War poets whoserved as a private in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers’. ‘Eleven-Fifty’ was composed inApril1938 and is a brief glorification of a high-speed train where the moto perpetuoaccompaniment barely stops. Berkeley admired Honegger bought a copy of thescore of his railway depiction Pacific 231 in 1924 andreviewed enthusiastically an all-Honegger concert conducted by the composer in Paris (‘A Paris Letter’ The MonthlyMusical Record June 1929).
