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Remembering Britten (part 2)

IV

 

Pizzicato pianissimo

its sound gestured into resonance

a slight plosive of winds sustained

Arco – a lament in falling thirds

whispering towards an upward leap and a hold

crescendo  decrescendo

Imagine his imagining in nature’s realm

(that patient catalyst for the solitary maker’s mind)

now guarding here its assembly in a sounding out

Adagio – in a three-fold telling

A measured preliminary to the music’s soon-to-dance theme

before rising scales and emphatic chords – Allegro Vivace

 

V

 

Words on the rise

bricks on the going

then in the hall on the wall

A poem you simply have to read so

crouch close to the Suffolk brick

don’t mind those  descending shoes

The verse is laced with words of sound

breaker march cry rumble clap

cueing memory into remembrance

And why why here

where formal musicking lives and rules

are we noised down steps by a boiling kettle?

 

VI

 

As the water holds its breath

so a dense cloudscape

forms and floats

Inverted

mirrored

wholly still

it replaces the water

with horizonless sky

and extended reflections of grass

But as water exhales

clouds coalesce

a right perspective restores

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Written by
nigel-morgan
Welsh
Published
Dec 31, 2012
Lines·Words
39·188
Notes

2013 marks the centenary of the birth of the composer Benjamin Britten. In 2011 I made a pilgrimage to the part of the Suffolk coast where he made his home and established the Aldeburgh Festival.

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