Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory…
This week on “The Lost Chord,” ‘tis an hour of seasonal works inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley and friends.
Hearken to Geoffrey Bush’s “A Summer Serenade,” from 1948, settings of poems by Shelley, James I of Scotland, Samuel Daniel, William Blake, Thomas Heywood, and the ever-prolific Anonymous.
Then listen, listen, Mary mine, to Arnold Bax’s “Enchanted Summer,” from 1918, the text drawn from Act II, Scene 2, of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound.” Composed in the midst of a run of Bax’s better-known nature poems (on the one hand, “Into the Twilight” and “In the Fairy Hills,” and on the other, “Nympholept” and “The Garden of Fand”), the work opens with the play of light and shadow on a forest floor, traverses mysterious caves and crags, and conjures woodland spirits; dallies with “voluptuous nightingales;” and eavesdrops on the exchange of two fauns, who contemplate the wondrous things they have witnessed.
In conclusion, bring hot blushes to thy cheek, with one of Romantic poetry’s most protracted pick-up lines and Roger Quilter’s “Love’s Philosophy,” from 1905.
’Tis mine hope that thou wilt join me for “Summer Shelley, Some Are Not.” The dulcet music swells, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
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