The Hermit Songs op. 29 is perhaps the best-known song cycle of Samuel Barber. Its ten songs are based on translations of medieval Gaelic and Latin texts attributed to Irish monks. The composer himself wrote of these songs: ‘They are settings of anonymous Irish texts from the 8th-13th centuries, written-often in the margins of the manuscripts they copied or illuminated-by monks and scholars, and perhaps often not intended to be seen by their Father Superior. They are small poems, thoughts or observations, often very short, and speak in a direct, peculiar and often surprisingly modern way about the simple lives these people led, close to nature, animals and God.’

The cycle was composed between 1952–53 and dedicated to the great American patron of the arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, whose foundation had awarded Barber a grant to complete the work. The premiere took place on 30 October 1953 in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress in Washington, with the young and then still unknown soprano Leontyne Price and the composer at the piano.