영국 출신의 작곡가 시릴 스콧(Cyril M. Scott, 1879~1970)은 세기의 전환기를 지나 살아온 인물이다. 그가 남긴 업적들은 작곡가로서의 음악작품뿐 아니라 시인으로 그리고 신비주의자로서 다방면에 이른다. 이 중 그가 남긴음악 작품들은 대중적인 성격의 교향곡에서부터 피아노 반주에 의한 성악 소품에 이르기까지 다양한 장르를 아우르고 있으며 그 분량 또한 적지 않다.
하지만 애석하게도 그의 음악 작품들은 그의 사후 그가 남긴 작품들에 대한권리문제를 비롯해 당시 스콧 작품에 대한 혹평으로부터 그의 명성을 보호하기 위한 보수적 입장의 견지 등으로 인해 현재 대부분이 무대에서 연주되어지는 것은 물론 악보조차 접하기 쉽지 않은 현실이다. 이에 우리나라에 소개되지않은 작곡가 시릴 스콧에 대해 소개하고, 그의 음악작품들 중 작곡가로의 성공과 좌절을 동시에 선사했던 소품 중 피아노 반주에 의한 4개의 성악곡을 분석,소개하고자 한다.Cyril Meir Scott lived from 1879 to 1970 for ninety-one years. He devoted his life to many different areas, including poetry, prose, music, and mysticism. His weird interests in theosophy and homeopathy, on the contrary, through shedding light on his characteristics and some of the subjects of his creative works, must be regarded as a negative aspect of his life and work. he developed many friendships and important collegial relationships during his life, and these friends and colleagues have tried out to the world to keep his work alive and get interested. As these people have passed on, others must have cast a fresh eye and ear on his works and given those an attention that those have long merited.
It is a common way of research to find new repertoires for singers snooping around the libraries and the professional music book stores. Most of time, it is easy to find any of art songs by the so-called “well-known”composers in Italian, French, and German under the well categorized and organized way to approach to the source. However songs by other languages, besides above three, or from the different cultural characters,it presents some degree of difficulty or challenge to the performers who want to expand their academic horizon. It is such a frustrating experience,considering not just the globalization but also outcasting the opportunity to understand so many other beautiful songs. Among performers and scholars, sharing this vision and academic ambition, since the last decade or so, Peter Warlock(pseudonym is also Philip Heseltine)'s songs have been revalued and added to the international music stages. He is one of Scott's contemporaries, sharing lots of precious musical characters with Scott's. It will be such a great loss if we miss the opportunity to know and rediscover Scott's songs into our knowledge and along this line, I hope this paper will be a limestone to do so.