This Boyhood’s End
was mine too, but
through its music’s dance,
not just Hudson’s farewell to a natural world
of exotic flowers and flocks of birds
on the great plains of the pampas.
In Tippett’s suite of songs I first found
that ecstasy of word-rhythm wedded
to melodic contour held in place
by a singer’s voice, and a pianist’s touch
of harmony grafted from a play of parts.
Sitting on my bedroom floor
ear close to the gramophone,
thirteen and already enamored,
I listened over and again to this cantata
that has for so long held the key
to the very door of music . . .
Music may be a notion like ‘God’ or ‘love’.
Everyone identifies with it,
but it is composers who live to fathom
its depths and sound out its mystery.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC
This Boyhood’s End
was mine too, but
through its music’s dance,
not just Hudson’s farewell to a natural world
of exotic flowers and flocks of birds
on the great plains of the pampas.
In Tippett’s suite of songs I first found
that ecstasy of word-rhythm wedded
to melodic contour held in place
by a singer’s voice, and a pianist’s touch
of harmony grafted from a play of parts.
Sitting on my bedroom floor
ear close to the gramophone,
thirteen and already enamored,
I listened over and again to this cantata
that has for so long held the key
to the very door of music . . .
Music may be a notion like ‘God’ or ‘love’.
Everyone identifies with it,
but it is composers who live to fathom
its depths and sound out its mystery.
This is a poem about listening to Michael Tippett's vocal cantata Boyhood's End, words by W.H.Hudson from his book Far Away and Long Ago. Catch it here for seven days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k0q45
