To Strive, to Seek, to Find and Not to Yield

While reacquainting myself with the poetry of Tennyson for this bi-centenary edition of Words and Music, I was struck by the choice many of his characters have to make between action and inaction, decision and indecision. Mariana helplessly waits for her absent lover in her remote moated grange, wishing she were dead, whereas the Lady of Shalott, who starts off in a similarly isolated and helpless situation makes the dangerous decision to break out of her lonely existence into the real world beyond the enchanted mirror. And similarly the Lotos Eaters drift into a life of drowsy ease, whereas the aged Ulysses decides to press onwards, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Using these characters from Tennyson as the mainstay of the sequence I added other poems that explore the ideas of decision, change, seizing the day, and fighting the inevitable.

So we open with the languishing Mariana, followed by the water nymph Rusalka, who longs for her unattainable lover in a similar vein, although she is more like the Lady of Shalott in that she takes the ultimate risk to win his love. Two poems on change and choice follow, and Hardy’s “Young Man’s Exhortation” to action is followed by Billy Bragg’s rendition of Blake’s anthem to determined striving, “Jerusalem”. Andrew Marvell urges his Coy Mistress to seize the day, while the Lady of Shalott embodies the idea that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

(But Lancelot’s final comment on his tragic lady , “she had a lovely face”, is a bit offhand to say the least - great events can often go unappreciated, as in Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts”…)

The still centre of the programme is Bach’s achingly beautiful “Schlummert Ein”, a deep desire for eternal sleep, followed by Shakespeare’s mighty and disturbingly logical dissection of the dilemma between action and inaction.

From this point the sea starts rather insistently to present itself as a metaphor for life and so three of Britten’s Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes” echo the atmosphere of poems on the decision to push ever onwards.

So finally on to T S Eliot’s idea that all exploration and effort will eventually bring us somehow back to where we started, although transformed, and to close, the poem that Tennyson wanted to be placed at the end of all editions of his poetry, “Crossing the Bar”, with its acceptance of the end of striving.

Elizabeth Funning (producer)

Readers:
Michael Pennington (MP)
Beth Goddard (BG)

00:00:00
Debussy : Voiles
Melvyn Tan (piano)
Deux-Elles DXL1092
Track 2

00:02:10
Tennyson : Mariana [Excerpt] (BG)

00:03.13
Dvorak : Song to the Moon from Rusalka
Renee Fleming (soprano)
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Georg Solti (conductor)
DECCA 4752442
Track 9

00:09:08
Kathleen Raine : Change (MP)

00:10:08
Robert Frost : The Road not taken (BG)

00:11:12
Sondheim : The Road you didn’t take (From Follies)
John McMartin
Original Broadway Cast
Angel ZDM 7646662
Track 5

00:13:53
Hardy : A Young Man’s Exhortation (MP)

00:14:59
Billy Bragg : “Blake’s Jerusalem”
From “The Internationale”
UTILITY UTIL11CD
Track 4

00:17:22
Marvell : To his Coy mistress (MP)

00:19:35
Van Morrison : Don’t worry about tomorrow
Polydor 531 789-2
CD1 Track 8

00:22:03
Verdi: La Traviata (Prelude to Act 1)
Philadelphia Orchestra
Eugene Ormandy (conductor)
Sony CD 45544
Track 18

00:25:55
Tennyson: In Memoriam [excerpt] (BG)

00:26:41
Bliss: Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott (Ballet): Prelude
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sir Arthur Bliss (conductor)
BBC Radio Classics 1565691842
Track 4

00:29:24
Tennyson: Lady of Shalott [excerpt] (BG)

00:31:19
Bent Sorenson: The Lady of Shalott
Cikada String Quartet
ECM 4651352ECM
Track 12

00:33:47
W H Auden: Musee des Beaux Arts (MP)

00:35:10
Tennyson : The Lotus Eaters [Excerpt] (BG)

00:37:43
J S Bach: Schlummert Ein, ihr matten augen (Cantata no 82)
Angelika Kirschlager (mezzo)
Venice Baroque Orchestra
Andrea Marcon (director)
Sony SK 89924
Track 3

00:47:07
Shakespeare: Hamlet: To be or not to be… (MP)

00:49:23
Britten : Moonlight from Four Sea Interludes op 33a
London Symphony Orchestra
Andre Previn (conductor)
EMI CDM 7 64736 2
Track 15