My friend is part of this incredible organization in Boston: Read the Poem and go to the bottom of the post for information. If you are anywhere near Boston, MA you need to go and see this
How still this quiet cornfield is to-night!
By an intenser glow the evening falls,
Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light;
Among the stooks a partridge covey calls. [stooks=sheaves standing in the field]
The windows glitter on the distant hill;
Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the fold
Stumble on sudden music and are still;
The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold. [wold=woods]
An endless quiet valley reaches out
Pat the blue hills into the evening sky;
Over the stubble, cawing, goes a rout
Of rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.
So beautiful it is, I never saw
So great a beauty on these English fields,
Touched by the twilight's coming into awe,
Ripe to the soul and rich with summer's yields.
These homes, this valley spread below me here,
The rooks, the tilted stacks, the beasts in pen,
Have been the heartfelt things, past-speaking dear
To unknown generations of dead men,
Who, century after century, held these farms,
And, looking out to watch the changing sky,
Heard, as we hear, the rumours and alarms
Of war at hand and danger pressing nigh.
And knew, as we know, that the message meant
The breaking off of ties, the loss of friends,
Death, like a miser getting in his rent,
And no new stones laid where the trackway ends.
[... ]
Yet heard the news, and went discouraged home,
And brooded by the fire with heavy mind,
With such dumb loving of the Berkshire loam
As breaks the dumb hearts of the English kind,
[ ... ]
**********
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wight [wight=man]
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
*******
We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?
A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings --
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
============
Composer Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) set this poetry* from the Great War to music in the early 1920s, but it took nearly 70 years before it was first performed.
Poetry by John Masefield (1878-1967), Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962). Mozart: Coronation Mass Saturday, March 21, 2009 8:00 p.m. Tickets: order online http://bbcboston.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=159288 There is a 35th anniversary party afterwards. All are invited.
The Back Bay Chorale presents:
MOZART|FINZI: Remembrance and Celebration
Finzi: Requiem da camera
Mozart: Exsultate Jubilate, Ave Verum Corpus
Britten: Psalm 70 - ³Deus in adjutorium meum...²
Bach: O Jesu Christ, mein's Lebens Licht
Free Parking at the Broadway Garage
Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, Cambridge
http://bbcboston.org/directions/index.php
Music has an unparalleled power to speak to the human condition. This concert brings together works that sing of both the loss and futility of war as well as the joyful experiences of life. Featuring Mozart¹s beloved Coronation Mass and a rare performance of Gerald Finzi¹s achingly beautiful Requiem da Camera, the concert explores the spectrum of human emotion. Mozart¹s dazzling Exsultate Jubilo and Ave Verum Corpus are also featured, along with Benjamin Britten¹s Deus in Adjutorium Meum and Bach¹s redemptive O Jesu Christ, mein's Lebens Licht.
or call me and I'll purchase them for you. Cindy: (617) 325-9967
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