So, what is a Cantata? A Cantata is a musical work composed for the voice. It is approximately twenty minutes long with smaller movements for solo voice, chorus and instrumental accompaniment — sometimes all three.
Church Cantatas, aka Sacred Cantatas, are intended to be performed during Christian liturgy.
What is the difference between an Opera and a Cantata? As a Cantata is a vocal work, mainly during the C17th and C18th, an Opera is a theatrical work combining drama, music, song and sometimes dance.
A few years ago I was online scanning the concert listings at a world-class venue in London. On this particular occasion I was looking for small scale music-making. The Baroque era is a favourite of mine, and I chose a recorder and theorbo programme.
On the day of the concert I was early, and so decided to spend some time in a book shop. Afterwards, I went to the concert hall and started my packed lunch. Before I could finish it was time for the concert to begin.
During the concert sometimes the instruments played together, sometimes they played solo. For one recorder solo, the recordist played two recorders simultaneously! When the theorboist played solo pieces, one of them was introduced as a passacaglia – which, to my amusement, collected philistinic giggles. If only the pictures of musical aristocracy on the walls of the concert room had ears of flesh!
This poem, The Known Great Composer, is about the concert. Head and shoulders above, one composer and his music made my whole time in London memorable. Memorable for the right reason – music.
No prizes, but if you can guess the Great Composer I don’t mention, you are a winner! Clue: Imagine the accompanying music in this clip being played two octaves lower on a solo cello…
First verse
“The Known Great Composer”
“The window blinds close
The stage lights are adjusted
Two musicians walk on stage
And we welcome them warmly…”
On the way home, I happened to see someone I knew. We talked for a while, and I expressed that I would be writing a poem about the concert. By this time, my mind had already begun putting the poem together.
Furthermore, before arriving home, I visited a local art gallery and talked more about poetry to the exhibiting Artist, referencing the couple of books I bought earlier that day written by the Poet Laureate.
When you look at the sky, what thoughts go through your mind and what feelings do you experience? Could you put words to any of this, or not really? In many respects the sky is nebulous, which implies that it can be described in a multiple of different ways.
And the imagination…
Maybe try this as an exercise:
Go to the sky
Close your eyes momentarily
Open them and write down the first thing that comes to mind
Many years ago on my walks around a large office complex, I felt drawn to look out the windows at the sky. I cannot necessarily put it into words, but it did me good; her other worldliness, her perceivable yet unperceivable character, her secrets and mysteries, her colour spectrum…
In my first poem about the sky, I use a mono-rhythmic tercet scheme:
‘The Sky, The Sky
The sky, the sky in all its many shades of blue
Spectacled scientists tell us it has to be this hue
Approximately eighteen months ago I was checking my emails whilst listening to the radio. One email was from the Globe Theatre in London and I happened to be looking through their linked, online catalogue. The radio station was BBC’s Radio 3 and a musician was talking about their preferred recording of a Wagner composition.
At that time, I had been a Wagner enthusiast for a few years – even seeing part of one of his compositions at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall… A thought occurred to me…: “What would it be like to hear the whole piece performed by German musicians and singers…?”
The CDs
Anyway, back to the ‘lightbulb’ moment. As I was looking through said catalogue and deciding how to use my discount code, floating over the airwaves came Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’. And, almost simultaneously (I think), my eyes landed on the theatre’s ‘Shakespeare Dictionary’. 💡 How about combining the two? This could be a world first: The Ring Cycle written in Shakespearean language!
Anachronisms
On New Year’s Day, 1st January 2022, I officially started the research. I was excited and looking forward to penning the ‘Shakespearean Ring’. I had a couple of German to English translations — good… Simply use the Shakespearean lexicon, etcetera, instead of contemporary English — and everyone will understand… But will they…? Where’s my red marker!
Exeunt The Bard and his contemporaries
Stabreim v Couplet
Wagner’s ‘Ring’ (or ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ to give you its full title) is a seventeen hour opera. He, himself, sourced various versions of the epic poem, writing and re-writing the text in stabreim. He also composed the music.
Definition of Stabreim: (Ger.). A versification style based on alliteration, common in German and other north European poetry of the early Middle Ages. It was adopted by Wagner when writing his own librettos …
Part 1: The Rhinegold
From left to right by nature’s design
Flows continuously the ready River Rhine
Lighter turquoise evenly spread
Becoming darker towards the bed
Near the floor the water dissipates
Leaving an increasingly breathable state
This vaporific man-sized space
Moves continuously and at apace
Across the floor of the riverbed
Where no man can naturally tread
Are rough rocks and undercurrent tides
And vertical caverns unimaginably wild…
I went to the National Poetry Library in London earlier this year. I was on a mission: to find out which magazines published similar poetry to mine. For the next two hours I looked at everything that was available. All, bar one, had absolutely no poems about music — not even remotely! In my first poetry book ‘Soaring Higher’ (see ‘books’ page) there are six full length poems with such tasty flavours!
This poem is about a musician — and no ordinary musician at that — but a Virtuoso. “But what is a Virtuoso?” I hear you cry. According to Grove Music Online:
“Virtuoso ( It., from Lat. virtus : ‘excellence’, ‘worth’ ) A person of notable accomplishment; a musician of extraordinary technical skill. In its original Italian usage (particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries) ‘virtuoso’ was a term of honour reserved for a person distinguished in any intellectual or artistic field: a poet, architect, scholar etc. A virtuoso in music might be a skilful performer, but more importantly he was a composer, a theorist or at least a famous maestro di cappella. In the late 17th and 18th centuries a great number of Italian”
“A Natural Virtuoso!”
“Just a few words I’ve penned over tea
That I hope will warm your heart and bless
Who in all the wide-world could it be?
An appreciative music lover no less…”
A piece of music that requires virtuosic technique is J. S. Bach’s famous showstopper: Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Fragments of the Toccata are included in a video of myself performing the poem.
In the Spring of 1990 I set about writing a poem about Easter with the intention of having it published in a journal that would be available at that time. When the poem was eventually finished, it was without ‘Eastertide’ in the title. Although I had virtually no church attendance since childhood, I found myself including elements of the Easter story.
Then, before summer was in full swing, some Christians started to befriend me. They were from a local church canvassing the area. I was eventually invited to a Sunday morning meeting and someone named Colin Spurdle was due to pick me up. However, for a good reason he forgot and said he would come the following week. That Sunday came and I was so eager to go that I decided to go by myself. I have now been attending the same church for thirty years, plus.
During my years at this church, the poem was redrafted, extended and finally finished.
Splashes of Ink 