Hypochonriacus was written around 1949. It is scored for solo Voice with Piano accompaniment and sets a poem by Charles Lamb. It was a test piece for the National Competitive Music Festival held aspart of the 1951 Festival of Britain.Cecil Armstrong Gibbs was a prolific and versatile English composer of the 20th century. Gibbs is best known for his output of songs but he also wrote a considerableamount of music for the amateur choirs that he conducted. His reputation as a song-writer largely lies in his natural gift for text setting he insisted on giving priority to the words over the music and had very clear musicalideas on what a song should be.