official web site since 1997 of the composer, author, poet and visual artist
First World War Poets
for Alto and Church Organ
sketches as played on carillon and celesta
Original recordings of the
Première Performance by:
MIRJAM BOERS & LOUIS LEVELT
recording JAAP WAJER
15th of April 2012
in the Lutheran Church, Edam
the organ is built by Gideon Thomas Baetz from Utrecht
CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY:
All the hills and vales along
JOSEPH RUDYARD KIPLING:
A son
JOSEPH RUDYARD KIPLING
Unknown Female Corpse
CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY:
When you see Millions
WILFRED EDWARD S. OWEN:
Futility
PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS:
In Memoriam Easter
RETURN TO
1st page of the '6 Songs'
In 'Poetry of the First World War, edited by Maurice Hussey, we find: "When we read one of Thomas's nature pieces we are inclined to ask ourselves this: Why is country poetry so frequently naïve? Isn't there room for adult writing on the countryside? Since Thomas was capable of complex thought in such surroundings, why must so much pastoral poetry resemble what the music critic, Constant Lambert, once remarked of the composer Vaughan William,, 'a cow looking over a gate'?"
Personally - having a bit of a 'pastoral mind' myself - I simply claim such 'naïvety' a 'basic human right' which is at the very basis of 'adult writing' with 'complex thought'.
If one needs convincing there's always Thomas's 'A Private':
A Private
BY EDWARD THOMAS
This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frosty night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
'At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush,' said he,
'I slept.' None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.