Monday Music: Sure on this Shining Night (Morten Lauridsen)

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Morten Lauridsen composes some of the most evocative choral music being written today. Continuing with our examples during National Poetry Month of poetry and music, this week's post is a superb joining of the two. Lauridsen provides a choral music setting for James Agee's poem, "Sure on this Shining Night." It is performed in this video by the University of Wyoming Collegiate Chorale.

    

Sure on this Shining Night

Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north,
All is healed, all is health
High summer holds the earth,
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandr’ing far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

James Agee (1909-1955) 

From “Description of Elysium,” stanzas 6-8, in Permit Me Voyage, (1934)

-

Monday Music: I Have Loved Flowers That Fade (Gerald Finzi)

April is National Poetry Month and during the month of April, Monday Music is featuring musical settings for works of poetry. Robert Bridges was a practicing physician in London as well as a poet. He was England's poet laureate from 1913 until his death in 1930. His poetry inspired many composers of his day. Choral composer Gerald Finzi wrote musical settings of "Seven Poems by Robert Bridges." "I Have Loved Flowers That Fade" is one of those poems.

 

                                I Have Loved Flowers That Fade
                                by Robert Bridges

                                I have loved flowers that fade,
                                Within whose magic tents
                                Rich hues have marriage made
                                With sweet unmemoried scents:
                                honeymoon delight–
                                A joy of love at sight,
                                That ages in an hour–
                                My song be like a flower!

                                I have loved airs that die
                                Before their charm is writ
                                Along a liquid sky
                                Trembling to welcome it.
                                Notes, that with pulse of fire
                                Proclaim the spirit’s desire,
                                Then die, and are nowhere–
                                My song be like an air!

                                Die, song, die like a breath,
                                And wither as a bloom;
                                Fear not a flowery death,
                                Dread not an airy tomb!
                                Fly with delight, fly hence!
                                ’Twas thine love’s tender sense
                                To feast; now on thy bier
                                Beauty shall shed a tear.

-

Monday Music: The Sun Never Says

Last year I began delving into the writings of Hafiz by reading Daniel Ladinsky's translations of the Persian poet. I am thankful for Penny Nash at Peneloepiscopal for introducing me to this beautiful choral piece based upon a poem by Hafiz.

Music by Dan Forrest
Text from Hafiz-inspired poetry by Daniel Ladinsky

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

-Daniel Ladinsky, from “The Gift”, copyright 1999

-

Monday Music: Blow, Blow Thou Bitter Wind (John Rutter)

Just because it is the middle of January, here is some winter music. The lyrics are from Shakespeare
(As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII), and the music by John Rutter.

-

Morten Lauridsen: Connecting Poetry and Music

Morten Lauridsen has written some of the most beautiful choral works in the western musical canon. Two of my favorites are "Sure on this Shining Night," and "O Magnum Mysterium." He often uses poetry as the text for his musical works. "Sure on the Shining Night," for example, uses James Agee's poem for it's setting. As a poet, I was fascinated to hear this brief discussion from Lauridsen about how he sees the connection between poetry and music.

-

Monday Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams (Kingsfold)

Last week the music of Thomas Tallis, the father of English church music, was featured. This week it's the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams who played a primary role in establishing English sacred music in the 20th century. Himself an agnostic, he took on the task of revising the English Hymnal and the result was both solid and magical. He had long collected English folk tunes and incorporated many of those tunes in hymns he composed for the hymnal. Kingsfold is a wonderful example of the fusion of English folk music with English poetry. As such, "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say" has been included in Celtic celebrations as well as in Christian hymnals across many denominations.

Vaughn Williams may have been an agnostic, but that was surely reflective of the times that he was born into and the world in which we live today. He had a compassionate, humanitarian spirit and an ear for beauty and harmony. Kingsfold, set to the text by Horatius Bonar, 19th century Scottish poet and churchman, beautifully and transcendently declares our discovery of "this dark world's light."

(For further reading: Why Ralph Vaughan Williams should he as revered as William Shakespeare, by Simon Heffer, The Telegraph.

*

Monday Music: Thomas Tallis

"Thomas Tallis was born near the beginning of the fifteenth century and very little is known of his early life. After a succession of appointments as a church musician, he spent most of his vocation in service to the Crown as musician to the Chapels Royal under four successive monarchs, both Catholic and Protestant. Although always a Roman Catholic, Tallis had the political savvy to survive the shifts in ecclesial loyalties and the musical acumen to respond to the changing needs of the Church of England. He is regarded as the father of English Church music since the Reformation."

(From Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music of the Episcopal Church at http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/william-byrd-john-merbecke-and-thomas-tallis-musicians-1623-1585-1585/)

The beautiful choral work, "If Ye Love Me" is presented here with a mesmerizing visual borrowed from Disney's Fantasia.

Morten Lauridsen on How to Write a Song

Last month I shared a beautiful choral piece by Morten Lauridsen, "Sure on this Shining Night." Over a year ago I shared another magnificently beautiful choral work of his, "O Magnum Mysterium." The man obviously has a gift for composing inspiring choral music. If you wonder how he does it, here he is explaining the process behind composing a memorable song. The work he talks about,"Dirait-on" ("so they say"), is a choral setting for one of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems. Rilke usually wrote in German, but this is one (of nearly 400) that  he wrote in French. Enjoy this brief lesson from a master composer!

*

A Musical Interlude "With Heart and Voice"

I had to go in to work last Sunday at the hospital. It was not my usual weekend duty, but I was working to allow a colleague the day off for her family. It would not be one's chosen activity to get up early to be at work by 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. I know I like having some slow leisure time to enjoy the day on Sunday. One of the good things about Sunday duty at the hospital for me is that at 6:00 a.m., our local NPR station airs With Heart and Voice. I always enjoy listening to the classical hymns and choral arrangements presented on that program as I drive in to work. As a rule, however, I don't get up early enough to hear the program if I'm not going to work.

Last Sunday was an especially rich one as the program highlighted the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams, the British classical composer who was called upon to work on the hymnal for the Anglican Church. His musical compositions remain some of the best that continue to be offered in current church hymnals.

I was able to hear a few of the selections on my way to work that morning, and it helped my day to begin in gladness. The entire program can be heard online. I was able to find another rendition of Vaughan Williams fine hymn, "Come Down, O Love Divine" on YouTube and have included it below: