Music and Poetry

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 810, 4 February 1955, Page 10

Music and Poetry

TATION 1YC gives us poetry and it gives us music, but seems to neglect all opportunities when an association of the two would sharpen listeners’ enjoyment of both. By the time I had turned up a copy of "The Rio Grande" the other night, Constant Lambert’s composition was half-finished, and the words (continued on next page)

are so faint on this recording that, without some refresher, one has little chance of remembering what it is all about. Surely it would be worth while recording the poem to be heard occasionally before the music is played? Would it not add something to both the poem and the music if Meredith’s The Lark Ascending were read before Vaughan Williams’s compositien? Or to Finzi’s Dies Natalis if we were reminded of Traherne’s words, or to The Afternoon of a Faun if we could hear Huxley's translation of Mallarmé’s poem? Announcers are not always competent to read such pieces, but if the poems were on tape like the Poetry Interludes, programme organisers should not be too heavily tasked to relate poetry and musie, and it might save others like myself that mad scramble for the right anthology when music inspired by poetry is plaved.

J.C.

R.