British cultural figures explore their intellectual, physical and cultural discovery of America from first impressions to today. Award-winning composer Errollyn Wallen ponders the parcels of exotic gifts that helped form her idea of America as a child.
States of Mind
Errollyn Wallen
'I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen left on the face of the earth.'
Jonathan Shipley, Bishop of St Asaph, 1714-88
'Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof'
Philip James Bailey, poet, 1816-1902
'The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children'.
Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, 1894-1972
From C18th clerymen to C20th monarchs via C19th poets, America has excited constant fascination from this side of the Atlantic. The idea of America is as constantly evolving as the country itself.
To coincide with the opening of a new exhibition exploring the first impressions America created on pioneering English travellers in the C16th, BBC Radio 3 invites four cultural figures to examine their first impressions of the country and how these developed into their own personal idea of America.
In the fourth in the series, composer Errollyn Wallen argues that the found music of the New York subway provides a perfect metaphor for the entire country. She also ponders the parcels of exotic gifts that helped form her idea of America as a child - and how this sense of otherness has been continued in adulthood by the distinctive work of American classical composers.
For more details about Errollyn Wallen's opera cycle Another America go to http://www.errollynwallen.com/
States of Mind coincides with the exhibition A New World: England's First View of America at the British Museum which runs from the 15 March - 17 June 2007.
From the exhibition A New World: England's first view of America at the British Museum.
An Indian werowance, or chief, painted for a great solemn gathering, by John White, c. 1585.
An iconic image of first contact between Europeans and Native Americans.
© The Trustees of British Museum
