Three of the following settings are by Miss Farr, and she accompanies the words upon her psaltery for the most part. She has a beautiful speaking-voice, and, an almost rarer thing, a perfect ear for verse; and nothing but the attempting of it will show how far these things can be taught or developed where they exist but a little. I believe that they should be a part of the teaching of all children, for the beauty of the speaking-voice is more important to our lives than that of the singing, and the rhythm of words comes more into the structure of our daily being than any abstract pattern of notes. The relation between formal music and speech will yet become the subject of science, not less than the occasion of artistic discovery; for I am certain that all poets, even all delighted readers of poetry, speak certain kinds of poetry to distinct and simple tunes, though the speakers may be, perhaps generally are, deaf to ordinary music, even what we call tone-deaf. I suggest that we will discover in this relation a very early stage in the development of music, with its own great beauty, and that those who love lyric poetry but cannot tell one tune from another repeat a state of mind which created music and yet was incapable of the emotional abstraction which delights in patterns of sound separated from words. To it the music was an unconscious creation, the words a conscious, for no beginnings are in the intellect, and no living thing remembers its own birth. I give after Miss Farr’s settings three others, two taken down by Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch from myself, and one from a fine scholar in poetry, who hates all music but that of poetry, and knows of no instrument that does not fill him with rage and misery. Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch, when he took up the subject at my persuasion, wrote down the recitation of another lyric poet, who like myself knows nothing Sometimes one composes to a remembered air. I wrote and I still speak the verses that begin ‘Autumn is over the long leaves that love us’ to some traditional air, though I could not tell that air or any other on another’s lips, and The Ballad of Father Gilligan to a modification of the air A Fine Old English Gentleman. When, however, the rhythm is more personal than it is in these simple verses, the tune will always be original and personal, alike in the poet and in the reader who has the right ear; and these tunes will now and again have great beauty. NOTE BY FLORENCE FARR.I made an interesting discovery after I had been elaborating the art of speaking to the psaltery for some time. I had tried to make it more beautiful than the speaking by priests at High Mass, the singing of recitative in opera and the speaking through music of actors in melodrama. My discovery was that those who had invented these arts had all said about them exactly what Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch and Mr. W. B. Yeats said about my art. Anyone can prove this for himself Now to read these records of music of the eighth and seventeenth centuries one would think that the Church and the opera were united in the desire to make beautiful speech more beautiful, but I need not say if we put such a hope to the test we discover it is groundless. There is no ecstasy in the delivery of ritual, and recitative is certainly not treated by opera-singers in a way that makes us wish to imitate them. When beginners attempt to speak to musical notes they fall naturally into the intoning as heard throughout our lands in our various religious rituals. It is not until they have been forced to use their imaginations and express the inmost meaning of the words, not until their thought imposes itself upon all listeners and each word invokes a special mode of beauty, that the method rises once more from the dead and becomes a living art. It is the belief in the power of words and the delight in the purity of sound that will make the arts of plain-chant and recitative the great arts they are described as being by those who first practised them. THE WIND BLOWS OUT OF THE GATES OF THE DAY.Music: The Wind Blows Out of the Gates of the Day Florence Farr. The wind blows out of the gates of the day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away, While the fairies dance in a place apart, Shaking their milkwhite feet in a ring, Tossing their milkwhite arms in the air For they hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing Of a land where even the old are fair And even the wise are merry of tongue. But I heard a reed of Coolaney say, When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung, The lovely of heart must wither away. Florence Farr. O Death’s old bony finger Will never find us there In the high hollow townland Where love’s to give and to spare; Where boughs have fruit and blossom at all times of the year; Where rivers are running over With red beer and brown beer. An old man plays the bagpipes In a gold and silver wood; Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd. Chorus. The little fox he murmured, ‘O what of the world’s bane?’ The sun was laughing sweetly, The moon plucked at my rein; But the little red fox murmured, ‘O do not pluck at his rein, He is riding to the townland That is the world’s bane.’ FOOTNOTE:I HAVE DRUNK ALE FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG.Music: I Have Drunk Ale from the Country of the Young Florence Farr. I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young And weep because I know all things now: I have been a hazel tree and they hung The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough Among my leaves in times out of mind: I became a rush that horses tread: I became a man, a hater of the wind, Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair Of the woman that he loves, Until he dies; Although the rushes and the fowl of the air Cry of his love with their pitiful cries. W.B.Y. I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream, And caught a little silver trout. A.H.B. O’Driscoll drove with a song The wild duck and the drake From the tall and tree tufted reeds Of the drear Hart Lake. FOOTNOTE:THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER.Music: The Song of the Old Mother W.B.Y. I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow; And then I must scrub and bake and sweep Till stars are beginning to blink and peep; And the young lie long and dream in their bed Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head, And their day goes over in idleness, And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress; While I must work because I am old, And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold. Printed by A. H. Bullen, at The Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon. Transcriber’s Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Page 25, stage direction, mixed case “TEIg” was changed to “TEIG” (TEIG and SHEMUS go out) Page 70, “marhsalled” changed to “marshalled” (marshalled into rude order) Page 112, “The CHILD” changed to “THE CHILD” to match rest of usage in text (THE CHILD makes a) Page 214, “Les MatinÉes de TimothÉ Trimm” was retained as printed as it appears spelled this way in more than one text. More common is “Les MatinÉes de TimothÉe Trimm.” Page 216, “apre” changed to “aprÈs” (Deux jours aprÈs) Page 217, “Des” changed to “DÈs” (DÈs qu’elle fut) Page 218, “enchainÉs” changed to “enchaÎnÉs” (enchaÎnÉs dans une prison) Music Transcriber’s Notes: Rhythms have been added to all songs where words are to be spoken on a single note, to match the rhythm of speech. Shadowy Waters—Although Yeats states in his notes on the music (pp. 223-24) that this piece was played on a violin in actual performance, he states that it is meant to be “Forgael’s magic harp.” For that reason, and reasons of improved sound in midi, a harp sound has been used. The Airy Bachelor—in bar 3, the second and fourth quarter notes have been corrected to eighths. In “Johnnie Gibbons,” bar 1, the first note should be a dotted quarter. In “The Lion shall lose his strength,” bar 3, the first note should be a dotted quarter. I—The rests should be quarter rests. II and III—The key and time signature are missing in the original, so the transcriber has guessed at them and adjusted the rhythm to the words. The Song of Wandering Aengus—a sixteenth rest and fermata have been added to bar 7 to match the rhythm of the other lines in the song. The Song of the Old Mother—In bars 3 and 19, the first note should be sharp. In the line “And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress,” the eighth note for “but” should be in the next bar. |