Don't you like the James a la Britten, David? The way he uses "Tom, Tom, the
Piper's Son" in Turn of the Screw to reinforce the focus on the children?
And the spooky Owen Wingrave is my favorite. I saw a film of the Britten
Owen years and years ago that was shot in Norfolk in a wonderfully
atmospheric house--maybe it was Britten's house, don't remember--but it had
windows of a size and shape that let in very little light, all of which
looked gray all the time from inside the house, and it looked to me as if
the film's lighting was tinted along the same spectrum so that
everything--mobile and stationary--not only had its own shadow but an
unchanging one, always the same length, depth, darkness, etc. One of the
creepiest effects I've ever seen--Candice
on 7/26/01 2:24 AM, david.bircumshaw at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> I think, if memory serves me, that Britten set Hopkins too, I know he
> definitely set Blake and Donne, (and unlike much his work, I do like his
> settings of poets).
>
> db
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "genet son of genet" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:19 AM
> Subject: Re: syllabics/Hopkins Browning
>
>
>> Theres an interview somewhere with Anthony Burgess. In it he speaks of
>> setting various pieces of H's poems to music, and also of finishing a play
>> of H's. I am sure many people have done things with Browning, and there
> are
>> some French musicans who have sets lots of H's work to music.
>>
>>
>>> From: Roger Collett <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Reply-To: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry
> and
>>> poetics <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: syllabics
>>> Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:37:48 +0100
>>>
>>> My wife, for whom the research is, wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>> Of course, Bridges. I should have known. Tried to set one of his poems to
>>> music (about 40+ years ago; problem was not being a good enough pianist
> to
>>> write an adequate piano part), and thinking back over the melody, it's
>>> clear
>>> I was aware of the rhythmic requirements. I think he had a lot more
>>> influence in his day than his readership these days might suggest. I
> wonder
>>> now if he himself deliberately set this syllabic hare running, being as
> he
>>> was in close correspondence with Hopkins and his so different prosodic
>>> developments.
>>>
>>> Do thank Robin for me, I'd be most interested in the article. Am sure
> he's
>>> right about the classical slosh-over, remembering how I tried to write
>>> Virgilian hexameters in the sixth-form, fully expecting to end up with
>>> something vaguely Miltonic, and instead got something like rudimentary
>>> sprung rhythm <<<<<
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