In celebration of the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, the Arts Council awarded the composer David Knotts and I the wherewithal to produce a full-scale orchestral and choral work as part of the year's events. David Knotts had previously set to music the poem 'The Muiveyo Cow' (from my collection The Song Atlas, published by Carcanet) for a children's choir.
The task was a libretto for a cantata featuring full orchestra, soloists and choir, in sections, with a not entirely grave look at the place, the time, and the people involved in the signing of the Magna Carta. The first draft came quickly: songs of the King, his cynical falcon, the trees and marshy places of Runnymede, angels of thorn and field, the presence of watching Nature and God, to see Good Done, and the folk. The requirements of rhyme and, more interestingly, strictish rhythm, fitted the ballad form, the meditative lyric, and the song of the people ; the requirements of a kind of narrative meant that the place came first, the arrival of the King next, the riddles of ink and seal and paper, the waiting trees and landscape after that, and the hopeful angel and the rather less hopeful folks to end.
It was salutary and invigorating to write an entirely objective set of pieces, involving no heartache, soulrend or emotionizing; creating characters and natural atmospheres, thoughts from reed and birds, and a riproaring song and dance for The Common People, was a delight, and the two months of fiddling, tinkering and changing, in close collaboration with the composer, was, like the tidying up of any poem after the Big Make, a pleasaunce.
The finished product will be performed as 'Toads on a Tapestry' on 6th June at the St Mary of Charity Church in Faversham. The whole libretto is printed in the programme.
For more information and ticket prices click here.
John Gallas was born in 1950 in Wellington, New Zealand. He came to England in 1971 to study Old Icelandic at Oxford, and stayed. He has worked for many years as a teacher with the Leicestershire Behaviour Support Team. He has published ten collections of poetry with Carcanet Press and edited the anthology of world poetry The Song Atlas (2002). Swims like a fish, cycles like a windmill.
www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk
www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk
The Carcanet Blog Sale
With every blogpost we offer 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors.
With every blogpost we offer 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors.
For the next two weeks, we're giving you 25% off John Gallas' The Song Atlas