Renaissance
A Song for All Seasons

Release Date: 1978 | Tracklist

“A Song For All Seasons” is the eighth studio album of Renaissance and was released in 1978. The line up on the album is Annie Haslam, Michael Dunford, John Tout, Jon Camp and Terence Sullivan. The album has also the participation of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.


Despite explorations into solo careers and several changes into their line up, all over the years, the five octave voice of Annie Haslam and the brilliant songwriting/musicianship of Michael Dunford remained as the core of Renaissance, despite the unsuspected quality of the other band members, including their lyricist and non-permanent member Betty Thatcher. In many ways, Renaissance was the band that anti-prog critics accused the entire movement of being. Flighty, melodramatic, orchestral driven and possessing only minor ties to the world of “rock and roll”, Renaissance could represent either the “purification” of the genre or one of its excesses, depending on your position. For those who favoured the group, certainly, their early material was about as “professional” as music produced by a British progressive group could be expected to be. I even dare to say they produced some of the best prog music in the 70’s.

Renaissance had deeper roots in the classical tradition than did most of the other progressive acts, often incorporating lesser known late romantic, (and beyond), motifs into their recorded work. Such ties may have helped them to remain true to their musical commitments at a time when many other progressive bands were collapsing artistically, somehow.

Given its date of release, “A Song For All Seasons” must be considered as a considerable triumph. If “A Song For All Seasons” isn’t quite as good as their previous albums, at least has the distinction of coming very close. Renaissance seemed to be immune from the onrushes of punk and AOR. If there was a capitulation, on this album, it was a minor capitulation involved, because it was more in the direction of the Euro-pop than anything else, which is to say, that this “capitulation” still allowed the group to operate within their normal parameters, in a way, at least on this album.

“A Song For All Seasons” was Renaissance’s last album to have a progressive feeling. However, six of the eight tracks are shorter songs with straight forward structures. For the first time, the band brought in a top name producer in the guise of David Hentschel. They also called upon Louis Clark, who had worked with the Electric Light Orchestra, to provide the orchestral arrangements played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The songwriting is dominated by the Camp/Dunford partnership, with long term lyricist Betty Thatcher, in the back. “A Song For All Seasons” is also the album which contains Renaissance’s best known and most commercially successful track, “Northern Lights”. This was rightly a huge hit single for the band, but it still manages simultaneously to retain all that is good about their music.

Musically, we can say that “A Song For All Seasons” is a transitional album where the band started to flirt with more pop oriented material on expense of their more progressive previous stuff. When Renaissance went pop, like they do here on “Closer Than Yesterday”, “Back Home Once Again” and their big hit “Northern Lights”, they started to sound much like ABBA. Anyway, the album fortunately also featured enough lengthy progressive epics and symphonic arrangements to make it worth a listen. “Day Of The Dreamer” and the title track are two complex songs that more or less maintained the Renaissance’s sound of the good old days. And the opening track “Opening Out” has a really beautiful melody that immediately grabs the listener. “Kindness (At The End)” is also quite good, while “She Is Love” on the other hand only manages to be a lit bit bore to me. The introduction of pop songs on the album makes “A Song For All Seasons” an uneven affair, but the progressive tunes are good enough to make it worth checking out if you liked their previous albums. And ironically enough, this was their most popular album in their home, in England, even if it was the first sign of the end of the band’s best period and the starting of the fall of another great progressive rock band.


Conclusion: All in all, “A Song For All Seasons” is another great album from Renaissance, with strong melodies and some well developed tracks. The excellent production and orchestration greatly enhance the feeling that this is a quality production. Sadly and unfortunately, this album was Renaissance’s last successful progressive album. In any way, “A Song For All Seasons” marks the end of a great period, the end of an era. 1979 brought the release of “Azure D’Or”, a flawed work in the style of the other major 1978 progressive releases. After this, the group moved in a more mainstream direction (though without the commercial success of Yes, Genesis, Asia, etc.). As a final statement of the group in its prime, however, “A Song For All Seasons” is an extremely notable work. Newcomers might be advised to seek out their earlier material first, but this album shouldn’t disappoint yet, anyone with an interest in this sort of music.


Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)

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