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  #11  
Unread 02-08-2020, 08:25 PM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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I find great poems to be music unto themselves... But also find good music to be poetry as such. When the two are joined the beauty is shared between the two. I'm ok with that too.
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And this.
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  #12  
Unread 02-08-2020, 08:49 PM
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Catherine Chandler Catherine Chandler is offline
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Donovan singing The Song of Wandering Aengus.
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  #13  
Unread 02-09-2020, 06:39 AM
Mark McDonnell Mark McDonnell is offline
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The Unthanks perform Emily Brontë

https://youtu.be/wjxZ-VbUihI
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  #14  
Unread 02-09-2020, 07:01 AM
Jim Moonan Jim Moonan is offline
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These are all so beautiful. Thanks for the thread Julie.

This is a bit of a twist on the topic but…
Leonard Cohen does a spoken version of a song (“A Thousand Kisses Deep”) live in London that highlights his slavish devotion to meter and rhyme, his impossibly hypnotic voice, and his reverence for words.

https://youtu.be/JtsP8PEjdps
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  #15  
Unread 02-09-2020, 09:55 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Annabelle Lee, by Sarah Jarosz.
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  #16  
Unread 02-09-2020, 07:19 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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And I believe some of you might have seen Natalie Merchant at West Chester a few years back. Here's her TED talk of poetic settings. I think the Hopkins beginning at around 17:30 or so is worth listening to.
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  #17  
Unread 02-09-2020, 08:04 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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What a treat to see such a response to this topic! Thanks to all. I'll comment on each as I find time.

Maryann, thanks for those. Gorgeous.

Mark, that Blake setting is so on-target! Love it!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale View Post
Same poem, same setting, but a different singer (Ian Bostridge, tenor) and this time you can see the music...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h506SNOLo0o
Psst, that's the same URL as the first you posted, Annie! I found this one of Bostridge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV0_1vpYY2g

I did not know that song or poem before, but the content strongly reminded me of this found poem, set by the great Dale Warland. The words are taken from an 85-year-old Englishman's oral history about a less-plugged-in era, when all participated in creating their lives' soundtracks more than we typically do today:


There was such a lot of singing and this was my pleasure, too.

The boys all sang in the fields, and at night we all sang.
The chapels were full of singing.

It was singing, singing all the time.
I have had pleasure.
I have had singing.

--Fred Mitchell
from
AKENFIELD: PORTRAIT OF AN ENGLISH VILLAGE by Ronald Blythe
(paraphrase by the composer)


Heart-melting performance by the University of Southern California Chamber Choir here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9owy8CXvFNg

Sheet music (perusal copy) for those who might like to follow along: https://www.graphitepublishing.com/w...7/W001Prev.pdf

A steady diet of this sort of peaceful sweetness palls, but I enjoy small portions. A whole program of it is too soporific for my taste.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 02-09-2020 at 08:14 PM.
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  #18  
Unread 02-09-2020, 09:32 PM
E. Shaun Russell E. Shaun Russell is offline
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Alex Lifeson (of Rush fame) had a solo album titled Victor in the mid-90s, and even though it's awful in some ways, his spoken word rendition of the titular poem (missing a few stanzas, alas) helped to foster my everlasting Auden love.
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  #19  
Unread 02-09-2020, 11:38 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clive Watkins View Post
There are, of course, numerous fine devotional poems that have had a double life as Christian hymns. Some started as poems and were later set to music; in some the words were composed in parallel, as it were, with the melody. Three favourites from boyhood are George Herbert’s “The Elixir”, Joseph Addison’s “The Spacious Firmament on High” and Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter”. This last has two lovely settings, one by Gustav Holst, one by Harold Darke. Then there is the wonderful Coventry Carol. The list could go on. But perhaps this kind of thing is outside the intended scope of this thread.

Clive Watkins
Clive, these links have some interesting info on various settings of the poems you mentioned:

Herbert's "The Elixir" ("Teach Me, My God and King"): https://hymnary.org/text/teach_me_my...ing_in_all_thi

A chorus from Haydn's oratorio The Creation was recycled for Addison's "Of the Glory of God in the Starry Heavens" ("The Spacious Firmament on High"):
https://hymnary.org/text/the_spacious_firmament_on_high

Christina Rossetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter" sometimes appears only as its last verse:
https://hymnary.org/text/in_the_bleak_midwinter
https://hymnary.org/text/what_can_i_...m_poor_as_i_am

Thanks for the Darke setting of the Rossetti--I'd never heard it before, and I found it interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3FwwnLvELw
I've always found the Gustav Holst setting beautiful, but a bit boring. (Yeah, yeah, I know, effective simplicity to match the simplicity of the text and all that.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-2Qz4hcwI

Here's a bit of backstory on how Holst came to write it:
http://landofllostcontent.blogspot.c...id-winter.html

Benjamin Britten did a rather (as advertised) bleak setting of it, which I find fun to sing, but I always feel sorry for the poor audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPmZkLaQRZY

Decades ago my husband begged off having to come and sit through his wife singing this kind of "weird, dark, depressing stuff" at Christmastime. He doesn't like "Coventry Carol," either. John Rutter's arrangement of "Coventry Carol" for treble voices and harp in his Dancing Day cycle is even weirder, darker, and more depressing than usual, with clashing chords. Bring it on, I say!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UH-4Q4_HiY
The contrast with the joyful next movement (the eponymous "Dancing Day") is terrific, although I far prefer Gardner's setting of "Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORkkVEHgdeE

And now I'm way off topic.

I also like Ola Gjeilo's setting of "Coventry Carol":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21-DwRhcpJo
Oooooh! But I just came across this arrangement by Michael McGlynn! I may have a new favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wit-jGD4wCw

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 02-10-2020 at 12:06 AM.
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  #20  
Unread 02-10-2020, 01:35 AM
Andrew Frisardi Andrew Frisardi is offline
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Great thread.

My contribution is John Tavener's settings for poems by Akhmatova; here is one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FPtoMTxHl8

I was at a live performance of this cycle, at which Sir Tavener was present, not long before he died in 2013, and it lifted the top of my head off.

I recommend this recording, which includes other Tavener compositions: https://www.discogs.com/it/John-Tave...elease/2771946.

Steven Isserlis on cello, Patricia Rozario soprano.
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