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What an honour it was to have Robert Hardy narrate the premiere of Silver Rose in the beautiful surroundings of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery.
Silver Rose is a musical response to five poems by Bristol born poet Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), who died inaction during World War 1. Working collectively like a song cycle, the poems are read before and during each of the five musical movements; the lyrical line can be clearly traced in the first, third and fifth (On Receiving News of the War, A Careless Heart and Song) whereas the second and fourth (Beauty and Returning, We Hear the Larks) are a more dramatic and aesthetic reflection. The choice of texts for the musical settings echo perspectives including the atrocities of war and hope for peace.
The title, Silver Rose, takes its name from two sources. The 1914 Star was a British campaign medal awarded to men who served in France or Belgium between 5 1914. Those who fought under enemy fire were also entitled to a bronze horizontal clasp engraved with the above dates and could attach a small silver rose to the ribbon when not wearing the medal. The final movement of the work, Song, also includes the words ‘silver rose’.
Commissioned by Bristol2014.
Five Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)
1. On Receiving News of the War
Snow is a strange white word.
No ice or frost
Has asked of bud or bird
For Winter's cost.
Yet ice and frost and snow
From earth to sky
This Summer land doth know.
No man knows why.
In all men's hearts it is.
Some spirit old
Hath turned with malign kiss
Our lives to mould.
Red fangs have torn His face.
God's blood is shed.
He mourns from His lone place
His children dead.
O! ancient crimson curse!
Corrode, consume.
Give back this universe
Its pristine bloom.
2. Beauty
As a sword in the sun -
A glory calling a glory -
Our eyes, seeing it run,
Capture its gleam for our story.
Singer, marvellous gleam
Dancing in splendid light,
Here you have brought us our dream,
Ah, but its stay is its flight!
3. A Careless Heart
A little breath can make a prayer,
A little wind can take it
And turn it back again to air:
Then say, why should you make it?
An ardent thought can make a word,
A little ear can hear it,
A careless heart forget it heard:
Then why keep ever near it?
4. Returning, We Hear the Larks
Sombre the night is.
And though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lies there.
Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp -
On a little safe sleep.
But hark! joy - joy - strange joy.
Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks.
Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.
Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song -
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides,
Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides.
5. Song
A silver rose to show
Is your sweet face;
And like the heavens' white brow,
Sometime God's battle-place,
Your blood is quiet now.
Your body is a star
Unto my thought;
But stars are not too far,
And can be caught -
Small pools their prisons are.
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