Last night's Handel & Haydn concert included selections from Henry Purcell's The Fairy Queen. As an English major I read The Fairy Queen along with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Canterbury Tales, and all sorts of lit that remains a vague memory.
The Fairy Queen is purported to be an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. One of the short pieces is: "Symphony While The Swans Come Forward." This is NOT the Water Music.
Does anyone but me find this title intriguing? We are waiting for the swans who are very pokey so we play a symphony while we wait? Are the swans swimming? In that case shouldn't it be "Symphony while the swans swim forward?" Glide forward? Paddle forth? Why are the swans so slow? Are they eating? Fighting? Grooming? Mating? We'll never know.
It was, by the way, an idyllically short symphony. What call it a symphony? Why not a song? Canticle While The Swans Glide Forward?
I could go on and on. Try some yourself. Waste time. Me? I'm off to the gym which I blew off yesterday. Pruning words on Festival Madness, a worthy cause. Changed the beginning again. I think it's getting there. The test will be to send out to a few agents and see what happens?
Symphony While the Agents Respond? Hell, that could be an entire year of music.
Grapeshot
Saturday, January 26, 2008
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