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Dec 2013
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
Nigel Morgan
Written by
Nigel Morgan  Wakefield, UK
(Wakefield, UK)   
1.1k
   Patricia Tsouros
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