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Perhaps the first English song cycle was Arthur Sullivan's The Window ; or, The Song of the Wrens ( 1871 ), to a text of eleven poems by Tennyson.

The composer and renowned Lieder accompanist Benjamin Britten also wrote cycles that are among the glories of the literature, including The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, 7 Sonnets of Michelangelo, Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente, and Winter Words, all with piano accompaniment, and the orchestral Les Illuminations, Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, and Nocturne.

Other examples include Vaughan Williams ' Songs of Travel, Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs ( 1953 ) and Despite and Still, and Songfest by Leonard Bernstein, Hammarskjöld Portrait ( 1974 ), Les Olympiques ( 1976 ), Tribute to a Hero ( 1981 ), Next Year in Jerusalem ( 1985 ), and A Year of Birds ( 1995 ) by Malcolm Williamson, Honey and Rue by André Previn ( composed for the American soprano Kathleen Battle ) and Raising Sparks by James MacMillan ( 1997 ).