Music, Gifts, Innocence and Experience
The choir is now well into rehearsals for The Gift of Music
Not for the first time, I am struck by the imagination, as well as the lateral thinking eccentricity, of the poet William Blake. His The Lamb inspired what I consider Sir John Tavener’s best choral piece. I will resist the temptation to go on about its technical brilliance as a composition, just say that its complex passages hint at the complexity of Blake’s thinking while the beguiling simplicity of the contrasting sections reflect the near naïvety which a swift glance might assign to the poem. When Tavener was pressed to write a companion piece it was natural that he should turn to The Tyger. Blake wrote them as ‘companion pieces’ himself, with a cross reference in the text that Tavener reflects in his music. It is not always realised that Blake was an illustrator as well as a poet and that the pictures often say as much as the words. I hope you find a browse through these links as fascinating as I have.
http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/william-blakes-songs-of-innocence-and-experience
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.10.42
Needless to say, the web also offers myriad other tempting destinations on this subject.
All this, and Lassus too . . .
