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Susannah Self

Self: Songs of Immortality

Version for Baritone & String Orchestra

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Composers Edition  |  SKU : ce-ss1soi2-pr-s

Description

The cycle comprises settings of poems by six poets known as "The Dymock Poets". They met regularly to walk, eat, drink and commune in the village of Dymock near Malvern before the First World War. Their "oeuvre" eagerly embraces questions of immortality which from poets of such youth is perhaps best explained by the fact that war was imminently on the horizon. of the six only two were involved in active service: Edward Thomas who died in the field and Rupert Brooke who died of an infection en route to battle and is buried on the Greek island of Skyros. Meanwhile Robert Frost decided to return to America. His iconic "The Road Less Traveled", usually interpreted in a very deep way, is here set with the knowledge that Frost probably wrote it to tease his friend Edward Thomas who had a predeliction to be indecisive. Even when Thomas had decided to sign up he was still not sure he had made the right decision! The three other poets, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Lascelles Abercrombie and John Drinkwater, found exemption from the war for a variety of reasons. There is a sense in the Dymock Poets' poems collectively that the World was about to change forever and that the old ways would soon be history. However they also display a universal insight into the vulnerability and numinosity of being in the present which they would say was also ever present in the past and future. in other words life signals us with endless clues that point us towards the existence of immortality.