![]() |
Home |
Words: Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
This is a challenging cycle, both musically and
poetically. I encountered Hopkins in a second-year English class and was baffled for many years afterward, remembering with envy the keeners at the
Then Andrea Mellis, a vocal coach and producer/director of operas and musicals in
Europe, and a good friend, asked me to write a song cycle on Hopkins' sonnets. I returned to them with
trepidation and discovered a poetry of amazing expressiveness and ecstasy.
Had Hopkins gotten simpler or had I grown? You decide. You may download a sample of the score (a couple of pages of each section) by clicking on the
button above. I used to give away the complete score here, requesting that people inform me of performances so that I can keep this website up-to-date. However, since nobody has, and since I know my stuff was being downloaded, I suppose it is possible that somebody, somewhere has performed it, but I don't know. If you want the full score therefore, please send me an email (below) or visit the Canadian Music Centre.
A word of caution perhaps, when working with such powerful stuff: in 2013, Andrea and I were married. She did perform #3 in Vienna in the early 1990s (but can't recall the exact date or location), and a full performance finally took place on my 75th birthday concert in 2021 (only six months late because of Covid).
Work diligently, all who attempt these songs. Bring
to them a prodigious technique and a love of Hopkins. Don't attempt them
if you are baffled by his words (good advice for any song), and do perform
them in the awe-struck manner in which they were written. All the songs
exhibit my own style of dissonant tonality and
my penchant for sometimes repetitive, sometimes conflicting
rhythms, as I try to capture Hopkins' themes of doomed striving
and resignation at final failure. He is depressing and
exhilarating all at the same time: what a challenge for poet or
for composer!
The influence of Minimalism can be seen in #1
and to some extent in #3. The second song is my personal
favorite, with its gentle wonderment at the contemplations of a
child, and the harmony in this song is basically chordal, though
roaming freely among tonal centres.
The fourth song, "The
Windhover", is the most challenging. The reader, the performers,
the composer, and, I suspect, the poet all must labor fully to
plumb its depths, and it must be played and heard in the
breathless and ecstatic mode of the poem. I am unaware of a more
perfect expression of the desire to break free of these earthly
bonds, and my setting of it probably represents an act of reckless
arrogance.
Duration: about 14 minutes
front of the class who bantered with the professor so easily about him.
![]() |
Top |