Program Notes
There is an inherent tension in Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poetry. His fascination with the intricate detail of nature is contrasted by the spiritual, a desire to transcend the world. Each poem in this cycle deals with this tension in different ways; some more, some less. This leads to varying levels of interpretive opacity and challenges the reader to engage with the text at multiple levels. The vivid immediacy of Hopkin’s descriptions are delightfully tangible—from the first two lines of “Spring:” “Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush.” Here, the musical setting is naturally optimistic and joyful, brimming with life and energy. In “Pied Beauty,” the poet crosses the boundary from nature into spirituality, praising God for His creative brilliance: “Glory be to God for dappled things—for skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow.” The music is again bright, ecstatic, and ebullient. “Inversnaid” is also primarily about nature. A small rural community on the east bank of Loch Lomond in Scotland, “Inversnaid” is a landscape deftly described. The poet yearns for the wildness of the countryside, weaving the reader through fast-flowing water accompanied by all the intricacies of the scene. The music is slightly manic, based on a relentless ostinato that mimics the unstoppable flow of water through the wilderness
The tone shifts dramatically in the two poems about light, “The Candle Indoors” and “The Lantern out of Doors.” Each poem delves into the deeper subjects of desire, conscience, death, and ultimately, salvation. Hopkins presents two views, as one outside looking in toward a candle and as one inside looking out at a lantern passing by. These contrasting views frame the same issue from two perspectives; as one who sees the light and accepts it, the other sees a passing light and yearns for that person to enter in as he has done. But the poet realizes that only Christ can move them, He is “their ransom, their rescue, and first, fast, last friend.” Musically, these songs are plaintive and melancholic, featuring repetition of figures and a steady flow throughout.
The first and last movements serve as thematic and emotional bookends to the other songs. The first, “God’s Grandeur,” is emphatic and grandiose. The timeless conflict between God’s grand creation and man’s corruption of it is presented with stark and brutal contrast. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.” The power of these words is brought to a crushing low by the truth of man’s fallen state, “and all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil.” But there is resolution and triumph because God will restore His creation, “the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
The final movement, “The Windhover,” is grammatically and structurally the most difficult poem in the cycle. Hopkins begins with nature, tracing the hovering flight of a bird and marveling at the control and mastery of the flier. But the poem shifts in focus from the flight of the bird to a view of humanity and of God. Hopkins alludes to the spark, “blue-bleak embers,” within our souls when we model ourselves after God’s will. Of course, our efforts pale in comparison to Christ’s achievement on the cross “the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion times told lovelier, more dangerous.” Our only potential for greatness then is associating ourselves with Christ, expressing faith in the power of his “gold-vermilion” blood, shed for us. To convey the circular nature of the poem—the bird’s circuitous flight and conceptual flow from bird, to man, to God—I created a piano accompaniment that is based on an continually transposing sequence of notes. This pitch series acts as a sort of unbroken ostinato, always in motion and always fluctuating, much like the dense and rich language of the poem.