Parry's Songs of Farewell were composed over the final decade of his life. The elegiac tone of the songs may also reflect a sense of loss caused by the First World War - in which some of Parry's most promising students at the Royal College of Music lost their lives - and a decline in national confidence, expressed in a different manner in Parry's famous Jerusalem of 1916. The motets are among Parry's most eloquent and concise works, demonstrating his famous contrapuntal skill and assimilation of the music of Mendelssohn and Brahms.