A Tale of Old Japan

A Tale of Old Japan

The appearance of this poem in its present form is due chiefly to the demand created for it by a vanished hand. It was set to music as a cantata by Coleridge Taylor, some years ago. He thought it his best work. Hardly a week has passed since then without some performance of it, in some part of the world; and it may be said that the music he wrote for it has won the lasting affection of the thousands that have heard it. He was, in two works, the most vital and spontaneous musician of his time. The first was his youthful setting of Longfellows Hiawatha. Then came many years of experiment with European subjects, disappointment, and apparent failure. In the Eastern theme of A Tale of Old Japan he found something which (as those who know his history will understand) enabled him to draw the bow across his own heart-strings, and, from the first note to the last, he gave in it the most pathetic, the most haunting expression, to his own spirit. To me it was a most moving fact that his great genius should have shown so scrupulous and infinitely painstaking a regard for the words of the poem. He submitted to their narrow room, but in a way that suggests quite new possibilities in the wedding of music and verse. He preserved every cadence of every line, and yet he gave the freedom of music to the whole, in a way that poets had ceased to think possible. It is therefore to his memory that I would dedicate the poem, all too poor a chrysalis as it must seem for those exquisite wings. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 63530
Author: Noyes, Alfred
Release Date: Oct 23, 2020
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Riches, Kate