Courtney West singing "The Birthnight"

In discussing Vaughan Williams Finzi himself offers an example of what should not be set:

And now Dr. Vaughan Williams has set to music Shakespeare's incomparable blank verse (not his lyrics, intended as songs for music!) and has chosen such a passage as:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sound of music Creep in our ears;

Such words are, emphatically, not to be set to music. They might inspire music, but it would be music pure, not music misusing the words and obtaining a mixed effect by dubious association. I know that many musicians do not hold this view, but it is my opinion and I believe it to be the opinion of the majority of poets who understand the art of music.

So there is a distinction between poetry that might inspire what he calls music pure, and poetry that might be set. Finzi, of course, set some of Shakespeare's lyrics, quite beautifully in my opinion — Fear no More The Heat o' The Sun especially.

Having mentioned poets who understand the art of music, Finzi rounds off his paragraph with the resoundingly clear caveat that "very few poets understand anything at all about the art of music" and, having said so, moves on to the composer's view:

The process from the composer's angle is this. He may read some lines. Instantly, with the reading, musical phrases will bind themselves to the words, like Pirandello's 'Six characters in search of an Author' crying for birth; music may even be brought about by the sounds, irrespective of the sense. When Holst set Robert Bridges "Say who is this with silver hair," he wrote "I did the first of the Bridges poems the moment I caught sight of the words. Since when I have been wondering what they mean."

What things mean is the big question. Why do those seven words of Bridges mean so much that was unknown yet powerful to Holst? Is it the vowels, the open a's at beginning and end of the phrase Say and hair and the closing of the mouth in the middle to u then flat i's 'who is this with silver'? It might be so.

But isn't the effect of such things very different in poetry and music? Let's take one rather gorgeous song by Finzi. I choose it for its sheer brevity. It is his setting of Walter de la Mare's poem "The Birthnight" (see video performance at left) :

Dearest, it was a night
That in its darkness racked Orion's stars;
A sighing wind ran faintly white
Along the willows, and the cedar boughs
Laid their wide hands in stealthy peace across
The starry silence of their antique moss:
No sound save rushing air
Cold, yet all sweet with Spring,
And in thy mother's arms, couched weeping there,
Thou, lovely thing.

The drumbeat of d in darkness in the second line answers dearest in the first, the mouth rears and rolls at racked pushing through, till the mouth opens wide on night which is then echoed by Orion. There is a natural break at the end of line two. The i's continue through sighing, sighing themselves as it were. The wind runs through line 3, every word an expulsion of air from the lungs, the soft w's gently whispering and sighing till the great whoosh of white, where the air practically sprints by us only to be given another lift, a second wind if you like, by willows, at which point the verse settles briefly on boughs, which is also an expulsion of breath and results in the broad mouths of laid their wide hands. Then follows a little soft sussurance with stealthy peace across the starry silence, the wind rising again in silence, closing down on moss but still hissing. You need a break there, a moment of silence so that you can take a run at the rushing air which is fairly dizzy, freezing us on cold that is paradoxically sweet with Spring, sweet almost like a birdcall. Couched is vital for the catch in the throat of weeping, which is echoed by thou. The whole poem sees birth in terms of a wind that builds and dashes, releasing that lovely thing into the world gently but momentously.

De La Mare has an exquisitely crystalline ear. His word music is self-sufficient. Complete. Now see what Finzi does with it.

The d's are separated in the long flow and the broad ah in was which, as a word and a unit of rhythm, is of far less importance in the poem. Racked is gentled, so you can have the broad a in stars. Down to moss it is the calm that reigns in Finzi, broad, wide, with a kind of tenderness but without the sound of wind. Rushing gets lost before the wide air and cold almost vanishes so the paradox of it being sweet with Spring loses force. Couched is reduced in effect. The broad peace that dominates the setting ends the poem, the little cry of thou also diminished before the long eee of thing.

This is not, let me emphasise, a criticism of Finzi's beautiful song, simply an attempt to demonstrate that what Finzi hears is not what de la Mare hears. Finzi hears the overall state of the poem as feeling: de la Mare's poem is a process in which the mood varies and in which there is a dramatised sense of place. Finzi doesn't diminish the material: he delivers a different material.

What then is the 'material'? Why is Shakespeare's blank verse suitable for what Finzi calls 'music pure' but not for setting? Why do apparently inane song lyrics hang around in our minds and open the doors to memorable music? Where is the region where the sisters meet and serve each other?

In order to begin examining that question I want to turn to the other sister, painting, and see where that leads us.

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