As many will be experiencing the inevitable travel chaos of the late summer bank holiday weekend, this sequence of poetry and music explores the idea of the journey. Melanie Kilburn and Joe Dunlop read a selection from Tennyson, Plath, Baudelaire and Wordsworth, with archive readings from John Betjeman and Philip Larkin. Music includes Nielsen's Helios Overture, Vaughan Williams's Songs of Travel and Ligeti's Lux Aeterna.
The Cast
Joe Dunlop and Melanie Kilburn
Playlist
Words and Music: A Traveller's Path
Producer's Note:
For many on this summer bank holiday weekend, travel will be a tortuous affair, from bottle necks at airports to delays on the rails and jams on the motorways. However, this edition of Words and Music takes the idea of travelling a step further - a journey of the mind.
There's the celebration of the train journey in archive readings by Sir John Betjeman and Philip Larkin; there's also Seamus Heaney's evocative Night Drive, and the grizzly horror of road travel in C.K. Williams' vivid Travelers.
Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken - written in jest to mock a walking companion who could never decide on which path to take - sets us on our way to consider the choices we have to make through life. The effort exerted by Thomas Gunn's snail as it pushes blindly through the green night leads to Wordsworth's Stepping Westward written after a woman stopped him and his fellow traveller on a walk in the Lakes, and asked "What, you are stepping westward?" The question left him considering '. the thought / Of travelling through the world that lay / Before me in my endless way.'
Tomas Transtromer's Solitude lucidly depicts the silence and isolation of a car crash with crystalline transparency, whilst Baudelaire's Voyaging tells of the dream of the journey.
Musically, all the works suggest or depict travel, or a journey of sorts. Carl Nielsen composed the overture, Helios, inspired by the rising sun over the Aegean Sea. On the score he wrote: "Stillness and darkness - then the sun rises with a peaceful song of praise - wanders its golden way - sinks silently into the sea." In this recording by Neeme Jarvi, the sun certainly doesn't hang about on its journey through the Grecian sky.
There's also the music of 13th Century Spain written in praise of the Virgin Mary, perhaps heard by pilgrims of the time. There's traditional music too from Morocco before an extract from Esther Freud's book, Hideous Kinky - a hair-raising journey on the back of a truck through the mountains.
Moniza Alvi's wry depiction of a boat docking in Liverpool and the immigrant's first experience of England is followed by Dan Pagis' Instructions for Crossing the border. A man with a false identity, yet no identity. Accompanied by the second movement of Steve Reich's Different Trains, Reich recalls that the train journeys he went on between New York and Los Angeles from 1939 to 1942 were exciting and romantic at the time. He realises however, looking back, that if he'd been in Europe during this period, as a Jew he would have had to ride very different trains.
In the song A la Habana from Osvaldo Golijov's opera Ainadamar, set around the scene of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca's murder during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, Lorca and friend, Catalan actress and producer Margarita Xirgu sing of travelling back to the safety of Havana, away from the war .
The overwhelming bleakness of Sylvia Plath's Crossing the Water creates an other-worldlinessas the darkness of night overcomes her, and finally to the accompaniment of Ligeti's Lux Aeterna - immortalised in the soundtrack of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey - Tennyson hopes to see his Pilot face to face, when he has crossed the bar.
Jeremy Evans (Producer)
22:15'00"
Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Joe Dunlop (reader)
22:15'25"
Percy Grainger
Walking Tune
Penelope Thwaites (piano)
Chandos CHAN 9895, track 16
22:16'08"
Percy Grainger
Walking Tune (Symphonic Band version)
BBC Philharmonic, Richard Hickox (conductor)
Chandos CHAN 9493, track 10
22:17'15"
Thomas Gunn
Considering the Snail
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
22:18'10"
Carl Nielsen
Helios Overture
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Jarvi (conductor)
DG 447 757-2, track 5
22:26'38"
William Wordsworth
Stepping Westward
Joe Dunlop (reader)
22:28'07"
Gerald Finzi
Till Earth Outwears: Life Laughs On
James Gichrist (tenor), Anna Tilbrook (piano)
Linn CKD 253, track 14
22:30'09"
Anonymous
Estampie on CSM 42
The Dufay Collective
Chandos CHAN 6513, track 4
22:34'51"
Traditional Moroccan
Maallem Ahmed
Nour Eddine
Arc EUCD 1626, track 10
22:35'10"
Esther Freud
Hideous Kinky (extract)
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
22:39'21"
John Adams
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle (conductor)
EMI 7243 5 55051 2 5, track 6
22:43'33"
John Betjeman Middlesex
John Betjeman (reader)
Music by Jim Parker
Members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Virgin VCCCD 20, track 7
22:47'50"
Philip Larkin
The Whitsun Weddings
Philip Larkin (reader) (1973)
22:53'12"
Richard Rodney Bennett
Murder on the Orient Express
BBC Philharmonic, Rumon Gamba (conductor)
CHAN 9867, track 1
22:55'52"
Robert Louis Stevenson
From a Railway Carriage
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
22:56'34"
Edward Thomas
Adlestrop
Joe Dunlop (reader)
22:57'57"
Billy Strayhorn
Take the 'A' Train
Ella Fitzgerald (vocal), Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Verve 517 953-2, track 1
23:00'45"
Seamus Heaney
Night Drive
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
23:01'35"
Philip Glass
Perpetual Motion
The Philip Glass Ensemble
Nonesuch 7559 79660-2, CD 5 track 2
23:02'35"
C.K. Williams
Travelers
Joe Dunlop (reader)
23:04'20"
Tomas Transtromer (translated by Robert Bly)
Solitude
Joe Dunlop (reader)
23:06'19"
Richard Wagner
Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Riccardo Chailly (conductor)
Decca 448 155-2, track 3
23:18'35"
York Bowen
The Way to Polden (an ambling tune)
Stephen Hough (piano)
Hyperion CDA 67267, track 15
23:22'12"
Moniza Alvi
Arrival 1946
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
23:22'43"
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Songs of Travel: The Vagabond
Christopher Maltman (baritone), Roger Vignoles (piano)
Hyperion CDA 67378, track 12
23:25'52"
Dan Pagis
Instructions for Crossing the Border
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
23:26'52"
Steve Reich
Different Trains - Europe During the War
Kronos Quartet
Elektra Nonesuch 979 176-2, track 2
23:34'17"
John Burnside
Out of Exile
Joe Dunlop (reader)
23:35'28"
Osvaldo Golijov
Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears) - A la Habana
Dawn Upshaw (Margarita Xirgu), Kelley O'Connor (Federico Garcia Lorca), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano (conductor)
Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 6165, track 9
23:38'42"
Francis Poulenc
L'Embarquement pour Cythere
Pascal Roge and Jean-Philippe Collard (pianos)
Decca 443 968-2, track 10
23:40'41"
Charles Baudelaire (translated by James McGowan)
Voyaging
Joe Dunlop (reader)
23:42'28"
Henri Duparc, text: Charles Baudelaire
L'invitation au voyage
Sarah Walker (mezzo), Roger Vignoles (piano)
Hyperion CDA 66323, track 1
23:47'17"
David Gilmour, Bob Ezrin
Signs of Life from A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Pink Floyd
EMI CDP 7 48068 2, track 1
23:47'45"
Sylvia Plath
Crossing the Water
Melanie Kilburn (reader)
23:49'30"
Gyorgy Ligeti
Lux Aeterna
Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, Timothy Brown (director)
Collegium COLCD 125, track 18
23:50'33"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Crossing the Bar
Joe Dunlop (reader)
