Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers: From Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt
Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, but also a moving commentary by one set of practisingartists on the work of another.

Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, and a moving commentary by one set of practising artists on the work of another. There have been several anthologies of "music poems", but never one which follows the story of western music through from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. This is in effect a chronologicalguide to the major composers of the last four hundred years, written in the language which comes closest to music itself - poetry.
Readers will find in Accompanied Voices the same pleasure that they might find in simply putting on a CD and listening. Every page brings something to arrest or transport and there is extraordinary diversity of response. Anecdote, epiphany, portrait, meditation... but many of these poets offer intellectual insights too and even critiques - there is far more variety here than any straightforward music essay can manage. These poems move beyond the mere names of composers and their works, reaching for more universal concerns.

Major poets represented include Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Peter Porter, Siegfried Sassoon, Jo Shapcott, Anne Stevenson and Charles Tomlinson among a total of nearly a hundred writers.

JOHN GREENING is a poet and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2008. He is also a Hawthornden Fellow and a Fellow of the English Association. He has published studies of the Poets of the First World War, Yeats, Hardy, Edward Thomas and Elizabethan Love Poets.
1120804411
Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers: From Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt
Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, but also a moving commentary by one set of practisingartists on the work of another.

Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, and a moving commentary by one set of practising artists on the work of another. There have been several anthologies of "music poems", but never one which follows the story of western music through from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. This is in effect a chronologicalguide to the major composers of the last four hundred years, written in the language which comes closest to music itself - poetry.
Readers will find in Accompanied Voices the same pleasure that they might find in simply putting on a CD and listening. Every page brings something to arrest or transport and there is extraordinary diversity of response. Anecdote, epiphany, portrait, meditation... but many of these poets offer intellectual insights too and even critiques - there is far more variety here than any straightforward music essay can manage. These poems move beyond the mere names of composers and their works, reaching for more universal concerns.

Major poets represented include Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Peter Porter, Siegfried Sassoon, Jo Shapcott, Anne Stevenson and Charles Tomlinson among a total of nearly a hundred writers.

JOHN GREENING is a poet and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2008. He is also a Hawthornden Fellow and a Fellow of the English Association. He has published studies of the Poets of the First World War, Yeats, Hardy, Edward Thomas and Elizabethan Love Poets.
27.95 In Stock
Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers: From Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt

Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers: From Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt

Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers: From Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt

Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers: From Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt

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Overview

Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, but also a moving commentary by one set of practisingartists on the work of another.

Accompanied Voices is a unique book: not only is it a highly readable anthology of some of the most memorable and accessible international writing about classical music, and a moving commentary by one set of practising artists on the work of another. There have been several anthologies of "music poems", but never one which follows the story of western music through from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century. This is in effect a chronologicalguide to the major composers of the last four hundred years, written in the language which comes closest to music itself - poetry.
Readers will find in Accompanied Voices the same pleasure that they might find in simply putting on a CD and listening. Every page brings something to arrest or transport and there is extraordinary diversity of response. Anecdote, epiphany, portrait, meditation... but many of these poets offer intellectual insights too and even critiques - there is far more variety here than any straightforward music essay can manage. These poems move beyond the mere names of composers and their works, reaching for more universal concerns.

Major poets represented include Geoffrey Hill, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth Jennings, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Peter Porter, Siegfried Sassoon, Jo Shapcott, Anne Stevenson and Charles Tomlinson among a total of nearly a hundred writers.

JOHN GREENING is a poet and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2008. He is also a Hawthornden Fellow and a Fellow of the English Association. He has published studies of the Poets of the First World War, Yeats, Hardy, Edward Thomas and Elizabethan Love Poets.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781783270156
Publisher: BOYDELL & BREWER INC
Publication date: 08/20/2015
Pages: 234
Product dimensions: 6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

Neil Powell: 'Music' xii

Introduction xiii

Dana Gioia: 'Lives of the Great Composers' xix

Thomas Tallis (1505-85)

Charles Tomlinson: 'Spem in Alium' 1

William Byrd: 'Ye Sacred Muses' 2

William Byrd (?1543-1623)

Sidney Keyes: 'William Byrd' 3

Edward Storey: 'William Byrd's Virginal Music from My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591) 4

John Dowland (?1563-1626)

Hal Summers: 'O Dowland, Old John Dowland' 5

Pauline Stainer: 'Mrs John Dowland' 5

N. S. Thompson: 'John Dowland on the Lute' 6

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Robin Fulton Macpherson: 'Morning Words' 8

Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652)

Stuart Henson: 'Harmonic' 9

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: 'Orlando Gibbons' 10

John Greening: 'The Lute at Hawthornden Castle' 10

Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Alistair Elliot: 'Buxtehude's Daughter' 11

Henry Purcell (1659-95)

John Dryden: 'An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell' 13

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 'Lines to W.L' 14

François Couperin (1668-1733)

John Heath-Stubbs: 'Couperin at the Keyboard' 15

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

Alison Brackenbury: 'Yesterday Vivaldi visited me ...' 16

Ruth Fainlight: 'Dixit Dominus' 16

Margaret Speak: 'Vivaldi's Bow' 17

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

Arthur Symons: 'On an Air of Rameau' 18

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Douglas Dunn: 'Loch Music' 19

Norman MacCaig: 'Pibroch: The Harp Tree' 20

Rowan Williams: 'Bach for the Cello' 21

John Heath-Stubbs: 'Homage to J. S. Bach' 21

Ivor Gurney: 'Bach and the Sentry' 22

Lotte Kramer: 'Fugue' 22

John Gohorry: 'Bach's Journal for George Erdmann' 23

Charles Tomlinson: 'If Bach had been a Beekeeper' 24

William Scammell: 'A Touch of the Goldbergs' 25

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Geoffrey Hill: 'G. F. Handel, Opus 6' 26

Alison Brackenbury: 'Writing Rinaldo' 26

John Byrom: Epigram 27

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

Basil Bunting: From 'Briggflatts' 28

Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-87)

Mick Imlah: 'Scottish Play' 29

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

William Scammell: 'Small Fanfare for H. C. Robbins Landon' 30

Thomas Holcroft: 'To Haydn' 30

John Gohorry: 'A fiat for Joseph Haydn' 31

Tony Roberts: 'After the Celibacy of Summer' 32

Antonio Salieri (1750-1825)

John Heath-Stubbs: 'Mozart and Salieri' 33

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91)

Seán Street: 'K595 (Mozart)' 35

Anne Stevenson: 'Kosovo Surprised by Mozart' 35

Elizabeth Jennings: 'Mozart's Horn Concertos' 36

Alistair Elliot: 'Exsultate, Jubilate' 37

Michael Donaghy: 'Cadenza' 37

Sheenagh Pugh: 'Mozart Playing Billiards' 38

Gregory Warren Wilson: 'The Unsung Mechanisms' 39

Peter Sansom: 'K563' 40

Thomas Hardy: 'Lines to a Movement in Mozart' 41

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Gillian Allnutt: 'Barclays Bank and Lake Baikal' 42

R. S. Thomas: 'Sonata' 43

Matthew Arnold: from 'Epilogue to Lessing's Laocoön' 43

Anne Stevenson: 'Arioso Dolente' 44

Ted Hughes: 'Opus 131' 46

Alan Jenkins: 'Für Elise' 47

Oliver Reynolds: 'The Composer's Ear-Trumpet' 47

Norman MacCaig: 'Concerto' 48

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)

Floyd Skloot: 'Paganini and the Powers of Darkness' 49

John Field (1782-1837)

Gerard Smyth: 'John Field' 50

John Greening: 'Field' 50

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

George Szirtes: 'Beautiful Place' 51

Gillian Clarke: 'The Piano' 51

Pauline Stainer: 'Music for Invasive Surgery' 52

Bernard O'Donoghue: 'Claire, Playing Schubert' 53

Humphrey Clucas: 'Winterreise' 53

Frances Cornford: 'For M.S.: Singing Frühlingsglaube in 1945' 54

Christopher Reid: from 'The Unfinished' 55

Hector Berlioz (1803-69)

Maxine Kumin: 'Rehearsing for the Final Reckoning in Boston' 56

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47)

Floyd Skloot: 'Mendelssohn at Thirty-Eight' 58

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-49)

Philip Hobsbaum: 'Chopin in London' 59

Donald Davie: 'In Chopin's Garden' 60

Robert Schumann (1810-56)

David Holbrook: 'Dichterliebe' 61

Marcia Menter: 'Schumann's Fantasy for Piano in C Major' 62

Dannie Abse: 'The Maestro' 63

Ivor Gurney: 'R. Schumann' 63

Brian Biddle: 'Tone Row' 64

Franz Liszt (1811-86)

Peter Redgrove: 'Pianism' 65

Roy Fuller: 'Benediction' 65

Gwen Harwood: 'A Music Lesson' 66

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

John Smith: 'Death at the Opera' 68

Martin Bell: 'Verdi at Eighty' 69

Richard Wagner (1813-83)

Dannie Abse: 'Wagner' 70

Patricia Beer: 'Brunhild' 71

Anton Bruckner (1824-96)

Oliver Reynolds: 'Anton Bruckner: Motet for Men's Choir' 72

Peter Porter: 'May, 1945' 73

Bedrich Smetana (1824-84)

Nigel Forde: 'Katerina Smetana' 74

Johannes Brahms (1833-97)

Roy Fuller: 'Brahms Peruses the Score of Siegfried' 75

Peter Porter: 'A Brahms Intermezzo' 76

John Fuller: from 'Brahms in Thun' 76

Penelope Shuttle: 'Concert, Southbank Centre' 78

Marcia Menter: 'Sonata for Violin and Piano, Opus 78' 79

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)

John Heath-Stubbs: 'Camille Saint-Saëns' 80

Ruth Fainlight: 'Softly Awakes my Heart …' 81

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-93)

Richard Kell: 'The Butterfly Hears Tchaikovsky' 82

Oliver Reynolds: 'Old Usher' 83

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)

D. M. Thomas: 'Music Student, First Violinist' 85

Michael Longley: 'Sycamore' 86

Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

Edmund Blunden: 'A Quartet' 87

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Norman Nicholson: 'For the Grieg Centenary' 88

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)

Charles Causley: 'Fauré' 89

Floyd Skloot: 'Fauré in Paris, 1924' 89

Penelope Shuttle: 'Après Un Rêve' 90

Leoš Janácek (1854-1928)

Martyn Crucefix: 'Diary of One Who Disappeared' 91

Helen Ashley: 'On a Farm Track, Northumberland' 92

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

Robert Saxton: 'The Nightingale Broadcasts' 94

Ivor Gurney: 'To the City of Worcester' 95

Conor O'Callaghan: 'The Dream of Edward Elgar' 96

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)

Mary Jo Salter: 'Libretto' 97

Gerard Smyth: 'Puccini' 99

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)

Edward Storey: 'Hugo Wolf at Traunkirchen' 100

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Thomas Kinsella: from 'Her Vertical Smile' 101

Maurice Lindsay: 'Das Lied von der Erde' 103

Michael Longley: 'Kindertotenlieder' 103

Frederick Delius (1862-1934)

Floyd Skloot: 'Delius & Fenby' 104

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Carol Rumens: 'The Submerged Cathedral' 106

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)

Peter Porter: 'Covent Garden in the Sixties' 108

Ivor Gurney: 'Serenade' 109

Vernon Scannell: 'Indian Summer' 109

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Gillian Allnutt: 'Sibelius' 110

Tony Roberts: 'Barkbröd' 110

Marcia Menter: 'Sibelius's Fifth Symphony in the Dead of Winter' 111

Robin Fulton Macpherson: From 'The Cold Musician' 112

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Gillian Clarke: 'Erik Satie and the Blackbird' 113

Amy Beach (1867-1944)

Frances Nagle: 'The Composer Amy Beach' 114

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

Matt Simpson: 'The Death Has Occurred …' 116

Maura Dooley: 'The Lark Ascending' 116

Ivor Gurney: 'To R. W. Vaughan Williams' 117

Matt Simpson: 'Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending' 118

Ursula Vaughan Williams: 'To the Man who Wanted a Symphony to Have a Happy Ending' 118

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Richard Terrill: 'Coming Late to Rachmaninov' 119

Martin Seymour-Smith: 'Rachmaninov' 120

Tony Roberts: 'The Isle of the Dead' 121

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Anthony Thwaite: 'One of the Planets' 122

John Greening: 'Holst' 122

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Jo Shapcott: 'Shapcott's Variation ...' 123

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Gregory Warren Wilson: 'On Playing Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand' 124

Floyd Skloot: 'Ravel at Swim' 124

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

Peter Porter: 'The Pines of Rome' 126

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

Roy Fuller: 'On Hearing Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra' 127

Helen Ivory: 'The King of Swords' 127

George Szirtes: 'Bartók' 128

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Terence Tiller: 'Petrushka (Stravinsky)' 129

Siegfried Sassoon: 'Concert-Interpretation' 129

Edwin Morgan: 'Venice April 1971' 131

Percy Grainger (1882-1961)

John Gohorry: 'Musicians Rehearsing al fresco' 132

Arnold Bax (1883-1953)

Dermot O'Byrne: 'A Girl's Music' 133

Anton Webern (1883-1945)

Nathaniel Tarn: 'For the Death of Anton Webern Particularly' 134

Gabriel Levin: 'After Webern' 134

Robert Crawford: 'The Music Cleaner' 135

Alban Berg (1885-1935)

Peter Jones: 'Alban Berg's Violin Concerto' 136

George Butterworth (1885-1916)

Andrew Motion: 'Rhapsody' 137

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959)

Helen Ashley: 'Frances Dancing with Martinu' 138

Ivor Gurney (1890-1937)

Ivor Gurney: 'Masterpiece' 139

N. S. Thompson: 'Gurney: At the Front' 140

Charles Tomlinson: 'To a Christian Concerning Ivor Gurney' 141

Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Gareth Reeves: from 'Nuncle Music' 142

Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) (1894-1930)

Robert Nichols: 'Elegy for Philip Heseltine' 143

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)

Stewart Conn: 'Playing Cards with Poulenc' 144

Aaron Copland (1900-90)

Richard Terrill: 'Appalachian Spring' 145

Gerald Finzi (1901-56)

Neil Powell: 'Finzi's Orchard' 146

Michael Tippett (1905-98)

Martyn Crucefix: 'Listening to Tippett Twice' 147

Robin Fulton Macpherson: 'To an English Composer' 149

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-75)

Joanna Boulter: 'Prelude' 150

Edward Storey: 'A Postscript to Shostakovich's Reply' 151

Maura Dooley: '1943' 151

Charles Tomlinson: 'Ode to Dmitri Shostakovich' 152

Tony Roberts: 'Sausage' 153

Olivier Messiaen (1908-92)

Fiona Sampson: 'Messiaen's Piano' 154

John Mole: 'Messiaen' 155

Samuel Barber (1910-81)

John Matthias: 'A Note on Barber's Adagio' 156

John Greening: 'American Music' 156

Lohn Cage (1912-92)

Alistair Elliot: 'The Old Man comes out with an Opinion' 157

Michael Donaghy: 'Cage' 157

Benjamin Britten (1913-76)

Ronald Duncan: 'Lament for Ben' 158

Kevin Crossley-Holland: 'The Aldeburgh Band' 159

Neil Powell: 'Borodins and Vodka' 161

Alfred Corn: 'Coventry' 162

Witold Lutoslawski (1913-94)

David Scott: 'Playing Lutoslawski in Grasmere Church' 163

György Ligeti (1923-2006)

Gabriel Levin: 'Ground Offensive' 164

Harrison Birtwistle (b.1934)

Alice Kouvanas: 'After The Minotaur' 165

Peter Maxwell Davies (b.1934)

George Mackay Brown: 'Peter Maxwell Davies: 60' 166

Arvo Pärt (b.1935)

Gillian Allnutt: 'Arvo Pärt in Concert ...' 167

Epilogue

Gwen Harwood: 'New Music' 169

Christopher Reid: 'Klangfarbe' 170

David Harsent: 'Tinnitus' 171

Elizabeth Jennings: 'A Music Sought' 172

Douglas Dunn: 'The Concert' 173

John Ash: 'The Other Great Composers' 174

James Reeves: 'Knew the Master' 175

Anne Stevenson: 'Improvisation' 176

Ursula Vaughan Williams: 'Silence and Music' 177

Composers 179

Poets 191

Acknowledgements 201

Index of first lines 207

Index of titles 211

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