Tennyson's "Ulysses" and Halley's "Untravelled Worlds"

I'm blogging from my iPod followers!

This is the first time I've done this, so it's quite exciting. I've spent that last day or so up at Timberline Ranch in Maple Ridge, on retreat with the Surrey Children's Choir for my first go in my official capacity as their new general manager. It's been a great weekend so far, filled with the the typical, cliched standards of music and laughter. I'm incredibly impressed with this new, young group. Their sight-reading is decent, they've got a fair bit of gusto when it comes to singing things like showtunes or, you know, Jerusalem, and their unison sound is the classic scc blend of beautiful.

For a good few years now, I've been very intrigued by the connection between music and literature, fuelled hugely by the mentorship of my highschool IB English teacher, Ronnie Haggarty. It's a wonderful thing that music can take already beautiful poetry and push it just that much further towards the edge of sublime.

Take for example, Tennyson's "Ulysses" and what a brilliant thing Paul Halley did with it in his composition "Untravelled Worlds".  Halley manages to match melodies with Tennyson's lyrics that lift the words to new levels, allowing for what I would argue is an even stronger connection with the poetry.  I think the most beautiful example is Halley's setting of the line "Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough/ Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades for ever and for ever/ When I move".

On the words "wherethrough gleams that..." Halley writes an ascending melodic line that breaks into a beautiful 3 part chord, topped with the highest notes the song has seen to this point.  Then just as the notes moved in an upwards motion as if to create the first half of an arch-like shape, the melody than subtly returns back to the midrange, both completing the arch AND evoking the feeling of a "fading margin" with each chromatic step.  Bam.

Pages later, Halley accompanies the word "silence" with brief phrases punctuated by eighth note rests.  The line from the poem is actually "...every hour is saved/ From that eternal silence"; the fact that the silences are brief, with short melodic lines seemingly breaking through it, mirrors Tennyson's vision of Ulysses/Odysseus seeking an extended, never ceasing life of excitement. At the end of this line, the melody extends the words with a triplet-like feel,  giving a sense that this wish has been or will be fulfilled.

Even something as simple as setting the words "sinking star" to a descending line from the 5th to the 3rd of the chord is a great example of Halley's bringing words to life.

If you haven't read this poem before, you should.

If you haven't heard the song before, you should go to the Grand Opening of the new Surrey City Centre Library on September 24th and hear the Surrey Children's Choir perform it in those fabulous acoustics!!

Ithaca- Ulysses' hometown.