16th and 18th October 2008 at 7.30pm LSO, ST LUKE’S
Songs and Recitations of the poems of John Donne
Ian Bostridge tenor
Mitsuko Uchida piano
Corin Redgrave speaker
Elizabeth Kenny lute
A. Ferrabosco II The Expiration (‘So, so,
Recitation The Extasie
Anonymous The Expiration (‘So, so, break off’)
break off’)
Recitation The Flea; The Good Morrow
Anonymous Goe and catch a falling star
Dowland Lute Fantasia
Recitation The Sunne Rising
Corkine Breake of Day (‘‘tis true, ‘tis day’)
Coprario The Message (‘Send home my long
INTERVAL 20 minutes
Bells
Recitation Devotions XVII (‘Perchance he for
whom this bell tolls’)
Recitation Holy Sonnet V (‘I am a little world
made cunningly’)
strayed eyes to me’)
Britten The Holy Sonnets of John Donne
Recitation A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day,
being the shortest day (‘Tis the year’s midnight’)
Anonymous The Bait (‘Come live with me’)
Anonymous Sweetest love I doe not goe
Dowland Lute Prelude (from the Margaret Board
‘O my blacke Soule!’
‘Batter my heart’
‘O might those sighes and teares’
‘O, to vex me’
‘What if this present’
‘Since she whom I lov‘d’
‘At the round earth‘s imagined corners’
‘Thou hast made me’
‘Death be not proud’
Recitation Holy Sonnet VI (‘This is my play’s
last scene’)
Lute Book)
Recitation A Valediction forbidding
mourning
Dowland Sweet, stay awhile, why will
you rise?
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Introduction
Homeward Bound
The voice of Ian Bostridge
Welcome to Homeward Bound, part of the Barbican’s Great Performers season. I am thrilled and honoured to have
been given the opportunity, in my home city, to present so much varied and ambitious work over the course of two
seasons. The works included have covered virtually the entire span of what we call classical music (with a little popular
music thrown in for good measure), from the closing days of Elizabeth I to the eve of the accession of Elizabeth II. The
musical palette has ranged from the microcosmic – lute song – to the cosmic – Britten’s grandest opera, Billy Budd.
My particular interest in English 17th-century culture is reflected in this evening’s interweaving of prose and poetry by
John Donne, who was once Dean of St Paul’s, just round the corner. It includes settings of Donne’s work by his
contemporaries as well as by Benjamin Britten.
The series ends with Britten’s Christmas cantata, Saint Nicolas, which I first sang more than 30 years ago at school.
Britten remains, for many of us, the model composer and musician of modern times. As a singer, I return for
inspiration to his words on receiving the first Aspen Award in 1964:
‘I believe in roots, in associations, in backgrounds, in personal relationships. I want my music to be of use to people, to
please them, to enhance their lives. My music has its roots in where I live and work.‘
Ian Bostridge
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Notes
Songs and Recitations of the poems of John Donne
Christopher Cook in conversation with Ian Bostridge
There’s a notable portrait of John Donne as a young
man. He looks out of the frame to the right but you can be
sure that it’s not you or I whose eye he hopes to catch. The
arms are casually folded across his chest as if to say,
‘So?’. His head is framed by a large, dark, floppy hat,
there’s a cloak casually thrown over one shoulder and
this young-man-about-London sports an expensive lace
and linen collar – open at the neck as if he were halfway
between his closet and the bedroom. Then there’s the
face – a thick, sensual mouth, come-to-bed eyes and just
the hint of a romantic moustache. Donne is an apostle of
the erotic and perhaps the cleverest writer of lyric poetry
in the language. The sinner who, in his middle years,
following worldly disappointment and sickness – all
carefully recorded – hoped that if he might not make a
saint then at least God’s grace could save him from the
everlasting bonfire. The dandy had become Dean of
St Paul’s, and the metaphysical love poet now addressed
sonnets to the Almighty.
‘I suppose we’re making a journey that begins with a very
earthy and materialistic view of love, with very direct
imagery’, says Ian Bostridge. ‘The way Donne addresses
his reader is also very direct. The poems may be complex
verbally but they are wonderfully palpable: you can
almost smell them and feel them. And we move through
that to Donne’s sickness and that meditation on the bell
tolling and the poet feeling himself within a somehow
larger community. Then [after the interval] we meet him in
a very spiritualised frame of mind, though again there’s
something very palpable and gritty and fearful as he
contemplates death and damnation. There’s a terrible
fear of damnation here [in The Holy Sonnets].’
I went into the local record library and there were
Benjamin Britten’s settings of Donne’s sonnets and I was
absolutely blown away. So they’ve always been a part of
my repertoire.’
If Britten’s Donne was where Bostridge’s journey began
– and where this evening will end, with a complete
performance of The Holy Sonnets of John Donne –
there were to be other pleasures along the way. Britten
was by no means the first English composer to set the
metaphysical master to music. ‘I wanted to make the
whole thing a more literary, dramatic sort of event. And
It was John Donne’s Holy Sonnets that first caught Ian
looking at the editions I knew that there were these other
Bostridge’s ear as a young man. ‘When I met my wife, the songs that were composed in Donne’s lifetime so I felt
first present she ever gave me was a copy of Donne. And that they and the Britten might go together well.’ So
3
Notes
Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger, William Corkine, John
Coprario and our old friend Anon. are rescued from the
early 17th century.
cosmopolitan figure. There’s an early portrait of him with
a beard and an earring, looking rather swarthy, as if he
were Spanish or Latin. It’s glamorously European.’
‘I think that they are very varied’, says Bostridge. ‘One of
the lovely things about having the same poem at the
beginning and end of the first half, “The Expiration”, is to
show the different ways that you can set the poem. You
could either treat it melodically or dramatically.’
Interspersed between these songs by all-but-forgotten
English composers are pieces for the lute by that master
of melancholy, John Dowland. If Dowland’s lute music is
not as sad as his songs, it still tugs at the heartstrings.
These are clever pieces, too, and that sits well alongside
the readings from Donne that are also part of this
evening’s programme. When Bostridge and Co. first did
the show in Vienna there were problems in this
department. They had ‘a wonderful German actor’ but ‘it
was slightly odd … hearing Donne in German. And one
of the poems, “The Extasie”, in the German translation
was obviously absolutely dreadful and [our actor] didn’t
want to do it, which shows you things don’t always carry
across the linguistic barrier.’
Do we know if Donne was happy with what he heard?
Did he even know what Ferrabosco, Corkine et al had
been up to? ‘I think it’s more than likely that he would
have known these contemporary settings, although none
of his poems was designed to be sung. They used to
circulate in manuscript and they only reached a wider
public because when they were published they were
published as songs. So someone must have given the
manuscripts to the composers … There’s a quotation
from Donne himself about not really liking anything of
his being set to music – even though they were called
“lyrics” – and finding them otiose.’
These early-17th-century English composers were
anything but provincial. Corkine had travelled to Poland.
Ferrabosco was born in Greenwich, the illegitimate son
of Alfonso Ferrabosco the Older, an Italian composer at
Elizabeth I’s court who collaborated with Ben Jonson on
the creation of court masques. As for the lutenist and violplayer John or Giovanni Coprario, he was born plain
John Cooper in around 1575. We may mock his cultural
pretensions but, as Ian Bostridge says, they’re a reminder
that London was already an international city by the
beginning of the 17th century and that musically it looked
to Italy and the Baroque for inspiration and cultural
standards. ‘Donne himself was this extraordinarily
4
Tonight’s actor is Corin Redgrave, who has been leaping
over linguistic barriers all his professional life. ‘I met an
actor friend of mine in Waitrose in Marylebone High
Street and he said “you’ve got to go and hear Corin read
‘De Profundis’ [at the National Theatre]”. It was
absolutely incandescent and I just thought he’d be
marvelous for Donne. And he is.’
So, too, says Bostridge, is the pianist Mitsuko Uchida. ‘It’s
exciting to perform with someone who doesn’t work with
voices every day. And also I learn a lot from someone
who’s playing in a different repertoire, some of which I
know and some of which I don’t. Someone who’s used to
playing pieces which last 40 minutes rather than songs
which last at most 6 or 7 and usually 3 or 4 minutes brings
a different structural understanding to the music, though
of course the overall architecture can be similar.
Notes
‘I’d always wanted to get Mitsuko to do more Benjamin
Britten. I’d done Winter Words with her and the Donne
settings are full of such fantastic piano writing.’
At the end of the first half of tonight’s performance,
before Bostridge and Uchida perform Britten’s The Holy
Sonnets of John Donne, there’s a splendidly eccentric
stage direction: ‘Pause; Bells’. And then we hear Donne’s
meditation on his illness. ‘The meditation begins
“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls …” so I realised that
if we had a bell then things would be self-explanatory. I
just wish that St Luke’s still had its bell!’
Nowadays it seems it’s ‘Ask not for whom the electronic
bell tolls …’.
In 1945 it tolled for the war dead, and when Benjamin
Britten persuaded Yehudi Menuhin to invite him on a
concert tour to Germany it tolled for those who had
survived the Nazi death camps. (Menuhin and Britten
spent a night at Belsen.) Britten began work on his
settings of nine of Donne’s sonnets as soon as he
returned to England. It comes as no suprise that, as
Britten’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter writes, ‘The
cycle is full of self-searching and feverish attempts to
believe that, despite the appalling corruption of human
nature, there is still some hope of salvation’.
Ian Bostridge finds the links between these Donne
settings and Britten’s own situation as he was composing
them inescapable. ‘What’s interesting historically is that
Britten set these pieces, which are partly about death and
which have this fear of damnation, at a historical moment
– when something that was damnable seemed to have
happened. I’ve sometimes speculated whether Britten
may have felt in some way guilty about all this, having
been a pacifist. For a pacifist to visit Belsen with a Jew
and to play concerts might have been very unsettling.’
Even without this dark 20th-century shadow upon them,
Donne’s Holy Sonnets are unsettling. Read in one way,
they are cries for help in the face of death and the threat
of damnation. Read them again and it’s almost as if
Donne is addressing God as a lover. ‘He’s one of those
poets who uses erotic intensity’, says Ian Bostridge. For
example, the final lines of “Batter my heart”:
Yet dearly I love you, and would
be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
‘It’s quite extraordinary. Then again I think that Britten has
very cleverly placed “Since she whom I lov’d”, the sonnet
in memory of his wife, at the centre of the cycle because
the whole story of Donne’s relationship with his wife is so
important. It’s an important marriage intellectually and
spiritually in the journey that he makes. Indeed, a lot of
the love poems are thought by some to have been written
to his wife.’
So where do we draw the line between sacred and
profane? In Donne it’s a porous frontier, which is
perhaps what makes him so ‘modern’: our 17th-century
contemporary.
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
Programme note © Christopher Cook
5
Texts
All texts are by John Donne (1572–1631)
Alfonso Ferrabosco II (before 1572–1628)
The Expiration
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away;
Turn, thou ghost, that way, and let me turn this,
And let ourselves benight our happiest day.
We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any so cheap a death as saying, ‘Go’.
Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.
Or, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late, to kill me so,
Being double dead, going, and bidding, ‘Go’.
Recitation
The Flea
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
6
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
‘Tis true; then learn how false fears be;
Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
Recitation
The Good Morrow
I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
‘Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix’d equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
Texts
Anonymous
Goe and catch a falling star
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Goe and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
Thy beams so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, ‘All here in one bed lay’.
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.
If thou find’st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
Recitation
The Sunne Rising
Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
She’s all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is;
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.
William Corkine (fl. 1610–17)
Breake of Day
‘tis true, ‘tis day; what though it be?
O, wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise because ‘tis light?
Did we lie down because ‘twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.
Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honour so
That I would not from him, that had them, go.
Must business thee from hence remove?
O! that’s the worst disease of love,
7
Texts
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.
The world’s whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.
John Coprario (c1575–1626)
The Message
Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death – things which are not.
Send home my long stray’d eyes to me,
Which, O! too long have dwelt on thee;
Yet since there they have learn’d such ill,
Such forced fashions,
And false passions,
That they be
Made by thee
Fit for no good sight, keep them still.
Send home my harmless heart again,
Which no unworthy thought could stain;
Which if it be taught by thine
To make jestings
Of protestings,
And break both
Word and oath,
Keep it, for then ‘tis none of mine.
Yet send me back my heart and eyes,
That I may know, and see thy lies,
And may laugh and joy, when thou
Art in anguish
And dost languish
For some one
That will none,
Or prove as false as thou art now.
Recitation
A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day, being the
shortest day
‘tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
8
All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
Of all, that’s nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.
But I am by her death – which word wrongs her –
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.
But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night’s festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight is.
Texts
Anonymous
The Bait
Anonymous
Sweetest love I doe not goe
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
At the last must part, ‘tis best,
Thus to use myself in jest
By feigned deaths to die.
There will the river whisp’ring run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there th’enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.
When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.
If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.
Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.
Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.
For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait :
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas! is wiser far than I.
Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way;
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.
O how feeble is man’s power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall;
But come bad chance,
And we join to it our strength,
And we teach it art and length,
Itself o’er us to advance.
When thou sigh’st, thou sigh’st not wind,
But sigh’st my soul away;
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
It cannot be
That thou lovest me as thou say’st,
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the best of me.
Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill;
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil.
But think that we
Are but turn’d aside to sleep.
9
Texts
They who one another keep
Alive, ne’er parted be.
Recitation
A Valediction forbidding mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
‘Now his breath goes,’ and some say, ‘No’.
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers’ love
– Whose soul is sense – cannot admit
Of absence, ‘cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
10
John Dowland:
Sweet, stay awhile, why will you rise?
Sweet stay awhile, why will you rise?
The light you see comes from your eyes:
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
To think that you and I must part.
O stay, or else my joys must die,
And perish in their infancy.
Dear, let me die in this fair breast,
Far sweeter than the Phoenix’ nest.
Love raise desire by his sweet charms
Within this circle of thine arms:
And let thy blissful kisses cherish
Mine infant joys, that else must perish.
Recitation
The Extasie
Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swell’d up, to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
By a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string.
So to engraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one;
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As, ‘twixt two equal armies, Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls – which to advance their state,
Were gone out – hung ‘twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the day.
Texts
If any, so by love refined,
That he soul’s language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He – though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same –
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love;
We see by this, it was not sex;
We see, we saw not, what did move :
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix’d souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size –
All which before was poor and scant –
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know,
Of what we are composed, and made,
For th’ atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But, O alas! so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we; we are
Th’ intelligences, they the spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their senses’ force to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
For soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can;
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot, which makes us man;
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love reveal’d may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change when we’re to bodies gone.
Anonymous
The Expiration
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away;
Turn, thou ghost, that way, and let me turn this,
And let ourselves benight our happiest day.
We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any so cheap a death as saying, ‘Go’.
Go; and if that word have not quite killed thee,
Ease me with death, by bidding me go too.
Or, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do.
Except it be too late, to kill me so,
Being double dead, going, and bidding, ‘Go’.
INTERVAL
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Texts
Recitation
Devotions XVII
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that
he knows not it tolls for him. And perchance I may think
myself so much better than I am, as that they who are
about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for
me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal,
so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.
When she baptises a child, that action concerns me; for
that child is thereby connected to that head which is my
head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a
member. And when she buries a man, that action
concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one
volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out
of the book, but translated into a better language; and
every chapter must be so translated; God employs
several translators; some pieces are translated by age,
some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but
God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall
bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library
where every book shall lie open to one another; as
therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon
the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so
this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am
brought so near the door by this sickness.
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety
and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which
of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the
morning; and it was determined, that they should ring
first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity
of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be
glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application,
that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The
bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it
intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion
wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up
his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye
from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his
ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? But who
can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of
himself out of this world?
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No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed
away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a
promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or
of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never
send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a
borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable
enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next
house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.
Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for
affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough
of it. No man hath afflicion enough, that is not matured
and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.
If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold,
and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure
will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in
the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it,
except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.
Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this
affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be
of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction,
digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this
consideration of another’s danger, I take mine own into
contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my
recourse to my God, who is our only security.
Recitation
Holy Sonnet V
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray’d to endless night
My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Texts
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
Benjamin Britten (1913–76)
The Holy Sonnets of John Donne
O my blacke Soule!
Oh my blacke Soule! now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, death’s herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled,
Or like a thiefe, which till death’s doome be read,
Wisheth himselfe deliver’d from prison;
But dam’d and hal’d to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?
Oh make thyselfe with holy mourning blacke,
And red with blushing, as thou are with sinne;
Or wash thee in Christ’s blood, which hath this might
That being red, it dyes red soules to white.
Batter my heart
Batter my heart, three person’d God; for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely I love you and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee.
O might those sighes and teares
Oh might those sighes and teares return againe
Into my breast and eyes, which I have spent,
That I might in this holy discontent
Mourne with some fruit, as I have mourn’d in vaine;
In mine Idolatry what show’rs of rain
Mine eyes did waste? What griefs my heart did rent?
That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent
‘Cause I did suffer, I must suffer paine.
Th’hydroptique drunkard, and night scouting thief,
The itchy lecher and self-tickling proud
Have the remembrance of past joyes, for relief
Of coming ills. To poore me is allow’d
No ease; for long, yet vehement griefe hath been
Th’effect and cause, the punishment and sinne.
O, to vex me
Oh, to vex me, contraryes meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begott
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vowes, and in devotione.
As humorous is my contritione
As my profane Love and as soone forgott:
As ridlingly distemper’d, cold and hott,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view Heav’n yesterday; and today
In prayers, and flatt’ring speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true feare of his rod.
So my devout fitts come and go away,
Like a fantastique Ague: save that here
Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare.
What if this present
What if this present were the world’s last night?
Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc’d head fell.
And can that tongue adjudge thee into hell,
Which pray’d forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight?
No, no; but as in my Idolatrie
I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty, of pity, foulenesse onely is
A sign of rigour: so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign’d,
This beauteous forme assures a piteous minde.
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Texts
Since she whom I lov’d
Since she whom I lov’d hath pay’d her last debt
To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her Soule early into Heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is sett.
Here the admyring her my mind did whett
To seeke thee God; so streams do shew their head;
But though I have found thee and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts mee yett,
But why should I begg more love, when as thou
Dost wooe my soul for hers: off’ring all thine:
And dost not only feare lest I allow
My love to Saints and Angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, Fleshe, yea, Devill putt thee out.
At the round earth’s imagined corners
At the round earth’s imagined corners
blow your trumpets, angels
and arise from death
you numberless infinities of souls
and to your scattered bodies go!
All whom the flood did and fire
shall overthrow
All whom war, death, age, agues, tyrannies,
despair, law, chance hath slain;
And you whose eyes shall behold God
And never taste death’s woe,
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn [apace]1,
For, if above all these my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace
When we are there.
Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that’s as good
As if Thoud’st sealed my pardon with
Thy blood.
Thou hast made me
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
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I dare not move my dim eyes anyway,
Despaire behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sinne in it, which it t’wards Hell doth weigh;
Onely thou art above, and when t’wards thee
By thy leave I can looke, I rise againe;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one houre myselfe can I sustaine;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.
Death be not proud
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor [yet canst thou]1 kill mee.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do goe,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sickness dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well
And better than thy stroake; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Recitation
Holy Sonnet VI
This is my play’s last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage’s last mile; and my race,
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span’s last inch, my minute’s latest point;
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my’ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to’heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they’are bred, and would press me, to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purg’d of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.
About the performers
Ian Bostridge
tenor
He made his operatic debut in 1994 as Lysander in
Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Opera
Australia at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 1996
he made his debut for English National Opera as
Tamino, returning for Jupiter in Semele. In 1997 he sang
Quint in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw for the Royal
Opera, Covent Garden, and has since returned for
Caliban in Thomas Adès’s The Tempest, Don Ottavio in
Don Giovanni and Vašek in The Bartered Bride. In 1998
he made his debut at the Munich Festival, singing
Nerone in L’incoronazione di Poppea, returning for
Tom Rakewell in The Rake’s Progress and the Male
Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia. He sang Janáček’s
Diary of One who Disappeared in a new translation by
Seamus Heaney, staged in London, Paris, Munich,
Amsterdam and New York. Most recently he sang Don
Ottavio for the Vienna State Opera and Aschenbach in
Death in Venice for English National Opera.
His award-winning recordings range from Bach to Noel
Coward, including Lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Wolf
and Henze, vocal works by Thomas Adès, Britten and
Janáček and operas by Mozart, Britten and Stravinsky.
Mitsuko Uchida is particularly
renowned for her
interpretations of Mozart and
Schubert, as well as of the
Second Viennese School and
Boulez and, most recently,
late Beethoven sonatas.
Richard Avedon
Ian Bostridge was a postdoctoral fellow in history at
Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, before embarking on
a full-time career as a singer.
His recital appearances
include the world’s major
concert halls and the
Salzburg, Edinburgh, Munich,
Vienna, Aldeburgh and
Schubertiade festivals. In 1999
he premiered a song-cycle
written for him by Hans Werner Henze. In 2003/4 he
held artistic residencies at the Vienna Konzerthaus and
the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg; in 2004/5 he shared
a Carte-Blanche series with Thomas Quasthoff at the
Amsterdam Concertgebouw; and in 2005/6 he had his
own ‘Perspectives’ series at Carnegie Hall and this year
at the Vienna Konzerthaus and here at the Barbican.
Mitsuko Uchida
piano
This season she is artist-inresidence with the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra and
at the Vienna Konzerthaus
and the Salzburg Mozartwoche. She will appear with
the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Cleveland
Orchestra and the Vienna and New York Philharmonic
orchestras, tour with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe
and the Philharmonia Orchestra. She will give recitals at
Carnegie Hall and the Royal Festival Hall, and perform
at the Salzburg Festival.
Previous highlights have included an artistic residency
with the Cleveland Orchestra in which she directed the
complete Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard, a
‘Perspectives’ series at Carnegie Hall and participation
in the Concertgebouw’s ‘Carte Blanche’ series, as
well as collaborations with Ian Bostridge and the
Hagen Quartet.
Her extensive award-winning discography includes the
complete piano sonatas and concertos of Mozart, a
Schubert sonata cycle, Debussy’s Études, Beethoven’s
piano concertos with Kurt Sanderling, a CD of Mozart
violin sonatas with Mark Steinberg, Schubert’s Die
schöne Müllerin with Ian Bostridge and Beethoven’s last
five piano sonatas. A new recording of Berg’s Chamber
Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff, Pierre Boulez and the
Ensemble Intercontemporain has just been released.
Mitsuko Uchida has a longstanding commitment to the
development of young musicians and is a trustee of the
Borletti-Buitoni Trust and Co-director, with Richard
Goode, of the Marlboro Music Festival.
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About the performers
Corin Redgrave’s extensive
theatre credits include titleroles in Pericles, King Lear,
Julius Caesar, Macbeth,
Coriolanus and Tynan. Other
roles include Brazen (The
Recruiting Officer), Samuel
Johnson (Resurrection),
Benedict Arnold (The General
from America), Gaev (The
Cherry Orchard), Andrew
Crocker-Harris (The Browning
Version), Hirst (No Man’s Land), Oscar Wilde (De
Profundis), Hugo Latymer (Song at Twilight), Boss
Whalen (Not about Nightingales), Brutus (Julius Caesar),
Norman (The Norman Conquests), Cecil Graham (Lady
Windermere’s Fan) and Abelard (Abelard and Heloise).
Among the many companies with which he has
appeared are the Royal Shakespeare Company and
the Royal National Theatre, as well as at the Liverpool
Playhouse, Alley Theatre, Houston, Chichester
Playhouse, Gielgud Theatre, Circle in the Square,
New York, Hampstead Theatre, Young Vic, Traverse
Theatre, Lyric Studio, Library Theatre in Manchester
and Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Corin Redgrave’s television credits include The Girl in
the Café, Foyle’s War, Spooks, Shameless, Trial and
Retribution, Bertie and Elizabeth, The Forsyte Saga,
Shackleton, The Woman in White, The Ice House,
Persuasion and Measure for Measure.
His film appearances include Venus, Enduring Love, To
Kill a King, Doctor Sleep, Enigma, The Man who Drove
with Mandela, Four Weddings and a Funeral, In the
Name of the Father, Eureka, Excalibur, Oh! What a
Lovely War, Charge of the Light Brigade, A Man for
All Seasons and The Deadly Affair.
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Elizabeth Kenny
lute
Richard Haughton
Corin Redgrave
speaker
Elizabeth Kenny is one of
Europe’s leading lute players.
Her playing has been
described as ‘incandescent’
(Music and Vision), ‘radical’
(Independent on Sunday)
and ‘indecently beautiful’
(Toronto Post).
In over a decade of touring
she has played with many of
the world’s leading periodinstrument groups and experienced many different
approaches to music-making. She is a principal player
and initiator of 17th-century projects with the Orchestra
of the Age of Enlightenment. She has also played with
the viol consort Concordia since its foundation, and
has built chamber music and recital partnerships with
a number of distinguished artists. Internationally, she
retains a strong connection with William Christie’s
Les Arts Florissants.
Elizabeth Kenny’s research interests have led to critically
acclaimed recordings of Lawes, Purcell and Dowland,
and the development of such concepts as the ‘Masque
of Moments’, which she took to festivals in England and
Germany last season.
She taught for two years at the Hochschule der Künste,
Berlin, is professor of Lute at the Royal Academy of
Music, and a Lecturer in Performance and Head of Early
Music at Southampton University.