Four songs by Samuel Barber

 

FOUR SONGS BY SAMUEL BARBER

Arpeggio flare. The nun's high cry that springs not fail. The swell quietened, the unseen swing of the sea.

A jaunty solitude. Madge and what her friend dared not think when young. Margery with them, tight-lipped at the knowing.

A smaller rolled chord. Weep for wonder, in a life disputed decades afterwards, at the kindness, the wholeness, of this shining night.

The fourth song has a lot of sharps and naturals all over it. Sometimes, to be clever, I've compared our diet to music with a shifting tonal centre, "like something by Samuel Barber". I was surprised that the first three songs of the set, when I looked at the music, didn't have that many more key changes than songs by other people. Barber said the music for this fourth song just popped out – not laboured, then – but admitted he wasn't all that keen on the text.

The first three songs are jaw-dropping.

The above was written in 2018, when I was working my way through Jo Bell's 52: write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going.  The brief for this particular one was chapter 22, calling for a prose poem.  It was a new departure for me, who use rhyme and scansion as a rule, but there's no law of nature dividing prose from poetry.  I had a go.

The piece was published in the online journal RIC.  They used another of mine, at about the same time, which has also appeared in this blog; one with similar origins to 'Four songs by Samuel Barber' above, and of the same kind, which I haven't made a habit of in the years since 2018.

Are you familiar with Samuel Barber's 'Four songs', op.13?