Quand poésie et musique se serrent la main : Gerard Manley Hopkins

(Conférence HorLieu - Lyon, 29 avril 1999)

François NICOLAS

Annexes

Poems

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

 

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

 

Degged with dew, dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

 

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness ? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet ;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet

 

As kingfishers

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonfly draw flame ;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring ; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name ;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same :

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells ;

Selves - goes itself ; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me : for that I came.

 

I say more : the just man justices ;

Keeps grace : that keeps all his goings graces ;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is -

Christ - for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

 

To what serves mortal beauty?

To what serves mortal beauty ' ­ dangerous ; does set danc-

ing blood ­ the O-seal-that-so ' feature, flung prouder form

Than Purcell tune lets tread to ? ' See : it does this : keeps warm

Men's wits to the things that are ; ' what good means ­ where a glance

Master more may than gaze, ' gaze out of countenance.

Those lovely lads once, wet-fresh ' windfalls of war's storm,

How then should Gregory, a father, ' have gleanèd else from swarm-

ed Rome ? But God to a nation ' dealt that day's dear chance.

To man, that needs would worship ' block or barren stone,

Our law says : Love what are ' love's worthiest, were all known ;

World's loveliest ­ men's selves. Self ' flashes off frame and face.

What do then ? how meet beauty ? ' Merely meet it ; own,

Home at heart, heaven's sweet gift ; ' then leave, let that alone.

Yea, wish that though, wish all, ' God's better beauty, grace.

 

Henry Purcell

Have fair fallen, O fair, fair have fallen, so dear

To me, so arch-especial a spirit as heaves in Henry Purcell,

An age is now since passed, since parted; with the reversal

Of the outward sentence low lays him, listed to a heresy, here.

 

Not mood in him nor meaning, proud fire or sacred fear,

Or love, or pity, or all that sweet notes not his might nursle:

It is the forged feature finds me; it is the rehearsal

Of own, of abrupt self these so thrusts on, so throngs the ear.

 

Let him oh! With his air of angels then lift me, lay me! Only I'll

Have an eye to the sakes of him, quaint moonmarks, to his pelted plumage under

Wings: so some great stormfowl, whenever he has walked his while

 

The thunder-purple seabeach, plumed purple-of-thunder,

If a wuthering of his palmy snow-pinions scatter a colossal smile

Off him, but meaning motion fans fresh our wits with wonder.

---

Oeuvres musicales présentées lors de la conférence

Samuel Barber

A Nun Takes the Veil (Heaven-Haven) (1937)

premier des 4 chants opus 13 pour soprano et piano

Enregistrement par Cheryl Studer (Deutsche Gramophon : DG 435 867-2)

Benjamin Britten

A.M.D.G. pour choeur a capella(1939)

- Prayer I

- Rosa Mystica

- God'Grandeur

- Prayer II

- O God, I love thee

- The Soldier

- Heaven-Haven

Enregistrement par The Finzi Singers, dir. Paul Spicer (Chandos : CHAN 9511)

Michael Tippett

The Windhover (1942)

pour choeur a capella

Enregistrement par The Finzi Singers, dir. Paul Spicer (Chandos : CHAN 9265)

François Nicolas

Deutschland (1989)

pour formation instrumentale (12 instrumentistes) et mezzo-soprano

Ensemble L'Itinéraire (M. Jordan ; dir. P. Rophé), mai 1989 (Paris)

Compositions musicales de Gerard Manley Hopkins 

	Première ligne	Titre	Auteur	État existant
1	Again with pleasant green	Spring Odes 1	Robert Bridges	Mélodie
2	Behold! The radiant Spring	Spring Odes 2	Robert Bridges	2 mesures d'une mélodie
3	Does the south wind	Ruffling Wind	Dixon	Ø
4	Done to death by slanderous tongues	Song from Much Ado About Nothing	Shakespeare	Mélodie sans paroles
5	Get you hence, for I must go	Song from The Winter's Tale	Shakespeare	Mélodie
6	If aught of oaten stop	Ode to Evening	Collins	Ø
7	I have loved flowers		Robert Bridges	Ø
8	I love my lady's eyes	Song	Robert Bridges	Mélodie
9	Margaret, are you grieving	Spring and Fall	Hopkins	Ø
10	Of Nelson and the North	The Battle of the Baltic	Thomas Campbell	Choeur (à l'unisson) avec accompagnement de piano
11	Orpheus with his lute		Shakespeare	Ø
12	Past like morning beam	Past like morning beam away	John Bridges	Mélodie
13	Silent fell the rain	Fallen Rain (The Rainbow)	Dixon	Mélodie
14	Sky that rollest ever	Wayward Water	Dixon	Mélodie
15	Summer ends now	Hurrahing in Harvest	Hopkins	Ø
16	The crocus while the days are dark	The Year (The Crocus)	Patmore	Ø
17	The dappled die-away	Morning Midday and Evening Sacrifice	Hopkins	Ø
18	The feathers of the willow	Song	Dixon	Ø
19		'Swan'	?	Ø
20	Thou didst delight my eyes		Robert Bridges	Ø
21	What shall I do for the land		Hopkins	Mélodie
22	Who is Sylvia		Shakespeare	2 mélodies (avec accompagnements variés)
23				Mélodie sans paroles
24				Mélodie sans paroles
25	Setting of Barned poems		Barnes	Ø
26	Setting of Greek		Sappho Sophocle Pindare	Mélodies
27	Settings of Latin			Ø