Sweet Day So Cool Poem Night in Love With the Day Art
By Simon Brackenborough
In my experience, music is a bully route to poesy. I'm fairly sure it was through the Five Mystical Songs by Vaughan Williams that I first discovered the works of George Herbert – the poet and rector of Bemerton, on the outskirts of Salisbury. Since his expiry in 1633 at the age of 39, Herbert has become known equally one of Britain'south nigh loved and respected writers of religious verse.
Herbert'south words accept been put to music by many composers. Just in reading these poems, I've found the Vaughan Williams settings peculiarly hard to shift from my mind. They contain some of his loveliest melodies, with a natural ease that perfectly marries Herbert's deceptive simplicity. Take for example The Call, set in the V Mystical Songs. Vaughan Williams takes upward the skipping rhythm inherent in its starting time line, and makes it a defining feature.
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us jiff:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.
John Drury'sMusic At Midnight is a fascinating biography of Herbert, full of literary insight that has helped me to better sympathize his verse on its ain terms. He likewise adds some clarifying light to the rather saintly reputation that has been cultivated around Herbert, particularly by Izaak Walton, who wrote the get-go biography a few decades afterwards the poet's death.
Herbert may have become a parish chaplain, merely he was born into a wealthy family – lords of Montgomery Castle on the Welsh borders, and role of the same co-operative of Herberts as the Earls of Pembroke.
His father died when he was young, and he moved with his mother to Oxford and then London. Brilliant and studious, he went on to Trinity College Cambridge, condign a fellow there and ascension to the prestigious part of 'Orator', which involved making official addresses and correspondence on behalf of the Academy.
Herbert'south journey to the priesthood was far from inevitable. A great career in public office might have come to pass, and when he finally became rector of Bemerton, merely three years before he died of suspected tuberculosis, he had agonised over his calling for some time.
Ironically, he was never publicly known for verse – in English at least. His Latin verse was published, just the verse so widely loved today was kept to himself: revised and reflected on in private, refined to his item mode of lean precision.
Nonetheless, when Herbert's poems were published shortly subsequently his death in a collection chosen The Temple, they became a huge success. He influenced a whole new generation of poets, and his words were soon being put to music by composers such as John Jenkins and Henry Lawes. Some made expressive solo songs, such as Purcell's version of Longing , or John Wilson'due south Content . More substantial is a choral verse canticle by George Jeffreys which setsEaster, the same verse form that opens the 5 Mystical Songs.
What is interesting is that these early settings don't seem near as concerned with Herbert's most celebrated poems today. Among these is Love (III) , better known by its first line 'Love bade me welcome'. It exemplifies Herbert's habit of finding religious metaphors in aspects of everyday domestic life – in this case, the hospitality culture he was raised in. Here'due south the commencement stanza, and a beautifully uncomplicated choral setting by the New York composer David Hurd.
Honey bade me welcome. Nevertheless my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
Only quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first archway in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked whatever matter.
Enthused past Drury's marvellous volume, I decided to have a drive to Bemerton and see St. Andrew'south church, where Herbert ministered. It'due south a small-scale and modest building. Beyond the road stands the rectory where he lived – a much grander structure with grounds along the river Nadder, a tranquil chalk stream that glides east towards Salisbury like a quiet prayer.
Entering the church building, I was pleased to notice a stone carving of 'Love bade me welcome' at the door. There is also a nice stained-glass window of Herbert, memorialised beside his friend Nicholas Ferrar, who has earned the eternal gratitude of Herbert fans by ensuring The Temple'due southposthumous publication.
Information technology'southward a pleasant place, only across these features in that location isn't much to come across. So I quickly went on to Salisbury cathedral, walking the half-hr route that Herbert must take known so well. Equally the well-kept front end gardens of Bemerton gave manner to a drab industrial estate, the not bad spire came into view – the tallest in the country. I presently arrived at the idyllic water meadows where the Nadder joins the Avon, a vantage point immortalised by John Constable. Today the same west front of the cathedral bears a statue of Herbert, defended in 2003.
Salisbury is a lovely urban center, and on such a beautiful May morning – young leaves glowing in spring sunlight, bluebells and cowslips crowding the verges – information technology was hard non to remember of Herbert's poem Vertue.
Sweetness day, so absurd, so calm, then bright,
The bridal of the world and sky;
The dew shall cry thy fall to-night,
For chiliad must dice.
Like The Telephone call, the rhythmic pulse of that first line was set to a beautiful tune by Vaughan Williams. But Hubert Parry also composed a choral setting of Vertue with its ain mellifluous charm.
In that location's an interesting connection here too. Every bit it happens, Parry married Elizabeth Maude Herbert, whose blood brother (another George) was the Earl of Pembroke. So Parry joined the same family unit tree as our poet, two centuries after he died.
The St. Andrew'southward window depicts Herbert holding a violin, and without uncertainty music was hugely of import in his life. He played lute and viols, and it's said he sang his own settings of his poetry, though no notation of them has survived. His was a golden age for music in England as well equally literature, and he would have known it – during his childhood in London, the composers John Bull and William Byrd visited his home, and John Donne was a family friend.
What's more, musical metaphors ring through his poems with remarkable abundance. I of the nearly striking occurs in Easter, which alludes to the 'three parts vied and multiplied' of the harmonic triad, and compares the sinews of the crucified Christ to lute strings.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy function
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is all-time to celebrate this well-nigh loftier day.
Consort both centre and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is merely 3 parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blest Spirit conduct a part,
And brand up our defects with his sweet art.
But poetry, of course, has its own inner music. Diane Kelsey McColley has described the way that Herbert's apparently simple arrangements of words are precisely 'tuned' to create multiple resonances:
Linear arrangements of words form vertical consonances whose overtones, every bit well as fundamental meanings, are in tune […] not just do thematically related concepts and images form vertical chords, only also the partials or secondary meanings – puns, etymologies, allusions, and the similar – are in melody as the partials of natural tuning are.
Well-nigh clearly of all, Herbert's poesy celebrates the essential goodness of music. HisAntiphon (I) joyfully exclaims 'Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing', which rounds off the Five Mystical Songs in rousing manner. It has been set to several hymn tunes, and George Dyson gave it an appropriately sunny handling in his Three Songs Of Praise.
Much more contrasting to the Five Mystical Songs is Roxanna Panufnik's imaginative setting of The Call. Whereas Vaughan Williams makes these words noble and affirming, Panufnik creates an temper of sensual mystery, with harp arpeggios wafting upwards like clouds of incense.
The composer Judith Weir seems particularly fatigued to Herbert – her several settings include a beautiful version of Vertue . But when Weir was deputed to compose the opening slice for the 2011 BBC Proms, she chose three particular lines from the poem Human being .
The stars have u.s.a. to bed;
Nighttime draws the drape, which the sun withdraws;
Music and calorie-free attend our head.
With the formidable musical forces of Janáček'southward Glagolithic Mass at her disposal for the concert, Weir turned these quietly nocturnal lines into a grand public argument, with organ and contumely blazing bright. Stars, Night, Music And Light anoints the world's largest classical music festival, announcing a long summertime of dazzling nights nether the stars.
A very different kind of selective quotation appears in the sonorous choral piece Contrition by Ola Gjeilo. He sets the final line of Perseverance in his central section: 'Thou art my rock, 1000 art my rest', and repeats information technology meditatively, a deeply felt mantra.
Herbert'south short life was marked by frequent poor health, and there is something moving in the fact that the late John Tavener turned to this poet after a menses of illness in his final years. TheIii Hymns Of George Herbert incorporates his earlier choral setting of Love (III), but he expands the forces, calling for a 'large, resonant acoustic', with a choir and string orchestra offset by an 'echo choir' and cord quartet at a distance. Bells and gongs sound from a gallery to a higher place.
The apply of this spatial organisation becomes apparent in the commencement selection of hymn: Herbert's 'echo poem' Heaven, which cleverly repeats the final syllable of each line as a new answering word to its preceding question.
A commercial recording of the Iii Hymns is notwithstanding to be made, but the 2013 globe premiere can be heard below. Herbert'south words traverse the far spaces of Washington Cathedral, with all the fourth dimension-stopping stasis that Tavener does and so well. The temple becomes an instrument. Its every corner sings. How wonderful it would be to hear this work under the slap-up vaulted ceiling of Salisbury, while Herbert'south statue gazes westward, out across the h2o meadows to his tiny church building in Bemerton.
The antiphonal effects of the music reverberate but every bit Herbert'southward verse, locked away during his lifetime, has echoed down the centuries since his death. These words, rich in their musicality, remain fertile basis for inspiration.
Talks and concerts related to Herbert'southward life and work continue to be held in the Salisbury area. But the story of Bemerton has 1 especially pleasing literary and musical epilogue.
The novelist Vikram Seth, author of An Equal Music among other works, has been an gentleman of Herbert since his youth. When he heard that the old rectory was going upwardly for sale, he made a visit, and was so taken by the place that he decided to buy it in 2003.
Afterwards the purchase Seth wrote Shared Footing: a series of poems in homage to Herbert, formally modelled on his favourite examples. These were set for voices by the composer Alec Roth. In his annotation to the Hyperion recording of the piece, Seth wrote about his experience of inhabiting Herbert's physical space, much equally he had inhabited his poetic forms:
At the beginning I felt his presence hourly, both within the house and outside. Every bit time passed, I began to think of it equally being somewhat more than my own, but still, indefinably, shared.
Of these poems,Host is a response toLove (III). Hither Seth creates a dialogue between himself and the location in which he felt then strangely welcomed. Roth sets it to alternate tenor solo and chorus. Both poems can exist read hither, but Seth's opening stanza is below.
I heard it was for sale and thought I'd go
To see the former firm where
He lived three years, and died. How could I know
Its stones, its copse, its air,
The stream, the pocket-sized church, the dark rain would say:
"You've come; you've seen; now stay".
But Roth adds something else to Host. At its close, the choir sing a few more lineswhich, according to Walton, were one time inscribed in the hall of the rectory, marking the completion of repairs during Herbert's tenure. The little verse form no longer remains, just it was titledTo My Successor.
If thou chance for to detect
A new House to thy mind,
And built without thy Cost:
Be skillful to the Poor,
Every bit God gives thee store,
And then my Labour's non lost.
These words was also set up for choir by James MacMillan, to be sung at the enthronement of Rowan Williams equally Archbishop of Canterbury. Several years afterwards, Williams visited St. Andrew's for a festival about Bemerton's famous priest. A poet himself and a long-standing admirer of Herbert, he blessed the welcoming stone at the church building door.
It seems that Herbert has many successors, of different sorts. And it'south surely no bad affair that I discovered the works of this fascinating human through the music of Vaughan Williams, however hard information technology may be to disrobe his poesy from that melodic clothing.
For Herbert, music ran non only through his poetry, but his whole life. So it is securely fitting that this detail entrance bade me welcome to his private world. What is clear is that Herbert'south legacy resounds in singing notes as much as it lives on in printed words. 'Such a Fashion, as gives us breath'.
This article was powered by caffeine. A cheap but meaningful way to support my writing is to buy me a coffee on PayPal.
'Music At Midnight: The Life And Poetry Of George Herbert' is available from Penguin. 'Poetry And Music In Seventeenth-Century England' is available from Cambridge University Press.
0 Response to "Sweet Day So Cool Poem Night in Love With the Day Art"
Post a Comment