w16090
| Title | Two Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Electra & Grief |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) Elizabeth Barrett-Browning (author) |
| Composition date | 1972 |
| Duration (mins) | 11 |
| Category | accompanied vocal |
| Instrumentation | S Vc |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | 0197 Eileen Dolan; Aisling Drury-Byrne |
| Notes | |
| Programme Note | As a romantic and impressionable youth, I got hold of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems and set some of my favourite bits. I was very choosey : the settings are so diffuse that in the first song, taken from the 5th of the famous 'Sonnets from the Portuguese', it takes 6 minutes to sing just 5 lines. That's because certain words are lingered over for minutes at a time, and also because of the long mood-setting vocalise which opens the song, to be echoed later in the hugely extended treatment of the word "ashes'. The second song, taken from an occasional sonnet called 'Grief', is more focussed, but even so it only manages 7 of the possible 14 lines. In short, I indulged myself totally. The musical language is romantic, but only with a small r. All the elements of what I take to be my "mature" style are there. I was lucky to have several perforances of the piece in the early 1970's by two consummate performers, the soprano Eileen Dolan and the cellist Aisling Drury-Byrne. |
This work is associated with the following collection items:
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