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Recitative after Blake (1961/7) |
For contralto and string orchestra - c. 8'
The text is from the Poetical Sketches published in 1785 but written several years earlier when Blake was eighteen. It embodies the quintessence of the author’s lifelong style: active figuration turning suddenly into static imagery which only suggests narrative relationships. Imagination was Blake’s measure for truth. Unlike his older contemporaries, reason for him was a secondary consideration. In his writing, free movement of the imagination creates emotional states free from the controls of cause and effect. Here we are invited to envisage the narrator as an introspective youth sitting alone with thoughts of anguish for an imaginary girl drowned in the lake into which he stares. In translating the imagery of this narrative into music, consideration of form centred on giving scope for sharp, sudden contrasts of mood. The style of ‘Recitative’ attempts to evoke this without cramping the constantly changing images into the statements and reflections of a more determinate formal process.
The work has been included in two Bath Festivals along with numerous performances in Paris, the USA and London. It achieved the award of the Lili Boulanger Memorial Trust in 1962 and is dedicated to Nadia Boulanger, with whom the composer studied.