Subject: BS: Lament of Swordy Well John Clare BBC Rad From: The Sandman Date: 22 Apr 24 - 03:18 AM https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000gnd5 |
Subject: English tunes JohnClare From: The Sandman Date: 22 Apr 24 - 03:53 AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMZXUp2thOQ |
Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare From: The Sandman Date: 22 Apr 24 - 04:09 AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2E6OZE3PNY |
Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare From: The Sandman Date: 22 Apr 24 - 01:33 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9N_zcxtk_g |
Subject: john clare poems set to music From: The Sandman Date: 22 Apr 24 - 04:36 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_JMae81jYU John Clare: The Meeting. Poetry and Song.This is a panel discussion about musical settings of John Clare's poetry - covering historic settings from around 1820, along with contemporary composition. The panel features discussion, performances of song and readings of poems. Kate Romano chairs the panel of Simon Kövesi, Julian Philips and Toby Jones, while Julian on piano performs songs with tenor William Searle, and Toby reads Clare's verse. This is part of a project celebrating 200 years since the publication of Clare's first book Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, in January 1820. alright joe offer |
Subject: English tunes JohnClare From: The Sandman Date: 23 Apr 24 - 02:25 AM Helpston hornpipe played on guitar Helpstone Hornpipe” (John Clare) -Fiddle Tune - Pandemic ... YouTube · AtlantaJazzGuitar 120+ views · 2 years ago 1:15 John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet of the Romantic Period. He was a contemporary of John Keats and Lord Byron, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2E6OZE3PNY |
Subject: RE: BS: Lament of Swordy Well John Clare BBC Rad From: The Sandman Date: 23 Apr 24 - 04:26 AM Released On: 22 Mar 2020 Available for 28 days Daljit Nagra selects the very best programmes from the BBC's poetry archive the above link is safe it takes you to bbc rADIO |
Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare From: GUEST,Steve Shaw Date: 23 Apr 24 - 05:45 AM John Clare is a very worthwhile subject for a Mudcat thread. He was a "peasant poet" who collected many folk songs and who published books containing hundreds of English folk tunes, as well as being a decent fiddle player himself. He was also an early environmental activist who catalogued the beginning of the destruction of his rural environment as the Industrial Revolution and injurious farming practices took hold. It could be that the ravages he saw going on around him contributed to his long-time mental ill-health. A good read from 11 years ago in the Guardian about him: John Clare, the poet of the environmental crisis – 200 years ago by George Monbiot. At least you can do links, Dick! ;-) As a postscript, I noted that one of his incarcerations was at High Beach in Epping Forest, just a couple of miles from where I lived for a few years. There's a great pub there! |
Subject: RE: English tunes JohnClare From: GUEST,Howard Jones Date: 23 Apr 24 - 06:13 AM ABC and pdf transcriptions of Clare's tune books are on the Village Music Project website (along with many other resources) VMP - mss list |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 24 Apr 24 - 02:15 AM John Clares collection of English tunes and the settings of music to his poems are two completely different subjects., Whoever comnbined the two appears not to understand the two very different topics |
Subject: John Clare – Traditional Musician From: The Sandman Date: 24 Apr 24 - 08:12 AM John Clare – Traditional Musician Katie Howson has been reading about the poet John Clare’s musical life and delving into his store of songs and tunes. By Katie Howson this link is safe and takes you to EAST ANGLIAN TRADITIONAL MUSIC TRUST https://www.eatmt.org.uk/john-clare-traditional-musician/ |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 24 Apr 24 - 03:39 PM They are different subjects, his poetry set to music is one subject, his collection of tradtional folk songs and tradtional tunes are another, they have nothing in common musically. one. his poems are his own creative work the tunes he collcted are not his composed work, they are tradtional but were collected by him. no one , with any knowledge of their subject, would try and say that Ewan MacColl compositions were the same subject matter, as the tradtional songs he collected with peggy seeger, they are two different subjects, to lump them together demeans both subjects, there is nothing idiotic about keeping them seperate |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 24 Apr 24 - 03:43 PM John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century; he is now often seen as a major 19th-century poet. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 24 Apr 24 - 03:44 PM John Clare and the folk tradition by George Deacon Francis Boutle Publishers - paperback, pp.400, £15, ISBN 1- 903427-11-9 I knew George Deacon slightly back in the late-sixties, and was very surprised when this book first appeared in 1983 since it didn't sound at all like the sort of thing that he would have become interested in. Then I remembered that seven years makes an alteration, and realised that I, too, was into all kinds of stuff which might have surprised people who knew me then. I was equally surprised when this new Francis Boutle edition landed on my doormat last week, as I'd neither asked for a review copy, nor even realised that it had been published ... Things are quiet down here in the Five Valleys! I couldn't immediately think of anyone to send it to for review, and so began reading the odd page here and there when I had a spare half hour - and soon became fascinated. John Clare was an immensely interesting character, and this is a very interesting book. But first I should tell you what it's not. It's not a book about Clare's life - although you do get a pretty good idea of it, but incidentally to the central theme. Nor is it a book about Clare's poetry - although his poetry is discussed fairly frequently. No, it 'does what it says on the tin' - it describes the sort of rural community in which he grew up, and makes it quite clear that he was an active part of that community. It describes his collecting methods and shows who and what his sources were. It suggests that this connection with the folk traditions of Helpston, Northamptonshire, effected all his writings, and quotes from his poetry, prose and a great many letters in illustration of this thesis. The book gives the texts and tunes (where given) of all the songs in John Clare's manuscripts, plus many other songs which he has stated that he knew, but did not 'collect', together with his descriptions of customs and village games. It also includes his famous collection of 263 tunes and the not so well-known dance manuscripts. All - and most particularly the songs - are very well annotated, if in a somewhat academic fashion by today's standards ... no Roud numbers are given, for example, and the citations are of publications in standard reference works, rather than of other instances within the oral tradition. But the most important thing about this book is that George Deacon presents a pretty clear and detailed picture of the traditional culture within which Clare grew up, and one which is probably unique for three very important reasons: that the period was the 1820s (far earlier than any other such collecting enterprise); that it was entirely local; and that the observer was a member of the community concerned. This is why it is so important to the likes of us. The poet Tom Paulin is also impressed; he says in his Preface that it is: 'a classic work, which brings us so close to Clare that we can almost hear his living voice. We can also hear his father's and mother's voices, so that a vanished world and a neglected culture comes back with an eager and vital freshness.' An important aspect of Clare's tune collection, which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere, is that much of it came to him from Gypsy musicians. In his own words: I used to spend my sundays & summer evenings among them learning to play the fiddle in their manner by the ear & joining in their pastimes ... got the tune of Highland Mary from Wisdom Smith a gipsey & pricked another sweet tune without a name as he fiddled it ... At these feasts and merry makings I got acquainted with the gipseys & often assosated with them at their camps to learn the fiddle of which I was very fond the first acquaintance I made was with the Boswells crew as they were calld a popular tribe well known about here & famous for fidders & fortune tellers ... the Smiths gang of gipseys came & encamed near the town & as I began to be a desent scraper we had a desent round of merriment for a fortnight sometimes going to dance or drink at the camp & at other times at the publick house.' Spelling and punctuation is Clare's own. The whole book is well presented and the staff notation of the tunes is very clear. Being musically illiterate, I can't vouch for the accuracy of the transcriptions, but the text is fairly clear of typos - just the usual things you find with scanned and OCRed texts; missing full stops and words like 'apart' and 'abetter' instead of 'a part' and 'a better', which a spell check won't pick up. For a 21st century edition, I was surprised to find the word 'Scotch' used several times in Deacon's text, where I would have thought that Scots or Scottish might have been considered more appropriate. I was even more surprised to find no mention of the fact that the complete John Clare tune collection has for some time been available on the Internet, via the excellent Village Music Project, in ABC format, courtesy of a lot of work by Flos Headford. Go to www.performance.salford.ac.uk/research/vmp/msroom/Jclare.abc if you want editable files and midi playback. Enough of small quibbles - this is a very worthwhile purchase, and £15 seems a fair price. I would recommend it to anyone interested in getting a better picture of where our traditions come from - not to mention 263 dance tunes, 208 pages of songs and their annotations, 13 pages of customs, and 17 sets of dance instructions. I'd like to end with a couple of short quotes from John Clare's poetry which seem to me to clearly indicate the value he placed on the tradition and the songs: ... as Wantley Dragon or The Magic Rose; The whole of music which his village knows, Which wild remembrance in each little town From mouth to mouth thro ages handles down. and ... The ballad in the ploughman's pocket wears A greater fame than poets ever knew. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 25 Apr 24 - 02:53 AM An important aspect of Clare's tune collection, which I've not seen mentioned elsewhere, is that much of it came to him from Gypsy musicians. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,henryp Date: 25 Apr 24 - 02:57 AM 'Scotch songs' are not necessarily songs from Scotland! ‘Scotch Songs’ and English Perceptions of Scotland in the Restoration 14 Sep, 2020 By Allan Kennedy; Dr Allan Kennedy looks at the vogue for Scotland-based popular songs in Restoration England, asking what their subject-matter was, and what they can tell us about English attitudes towards Scotland in the later 17th century. From Wikipedia; Barbara Allen. A diary entry by Samuel Pepys on 2 January 1666 contains the earliest extant reference to the song. In it, he recalls the fun and games at a New Years party: ...but above all, my dear Mrs Knipp, with whom I sang; and in perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen. From this, Steve Roud and Julia Bishop have inferred the song was popular at that time, suggesting that it may have been written for stage performance, as Elizabeth Knepp was a professional actress, singer, and dancer. However, the folklorists Phillips Barry and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm were of the opinion that the song "was not a stage song at all but a libel on Barbara Villiers and her relations with Charles II". Charles Seeger points out that Pepys' delight at hearing a libelous song about the King's mistress was perfectly in character. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Jack Campin Date: 25 Apr 24 - 03:52 AM One reason to combine threads about Clare's own tune collection and the modern settings of his poems: it shows how much better Clare's own taste was. A modern folkie put together a show of his own settings of Clare and presented it at Whitby a few years ago - cringe-inducing mediocrity. For a lot of them he could have used one of Clare's own tunes with stunning effect - instead we got something as bad as Kate Rusby's rewrites. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 25 Apr 24 - 08:12 AM 1.mediocrity like beauty is in the eye of the beholder 2 Generalsing from one particular musical setting is a mistake, and in my opinion is not a reason for combining two different subject matters, his poetry and his collection of tunes, however I accept that we are dealing with an illogical musical editor, Who has the power to demean, two different topics, its his forum, c est la vie |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,Steve Shaw Date: 25 Apr 24 - 05:38 PM Well, there'll be a next time. At least you've got a thread (begod we tried...). We can discuss John Clare for now in a broad sense, and he's a bloke who is well worth discussing and well worthy of his place on this website. Roll with it. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 26 Apr 24 - 01:50 AM and many thanks to joe offer for one thread on John Clare |
Subject: ADD: To the Nightingale (John Clare) From: The Sandman Date: 29 Apr 24 - 03:27 AM To the Nightingale by John Clare I love to hear the Nightingale— She comes where Summer dwells— Among the brakes and orchis flowers, And foxglove's freckled bells. Where mugwort grows like mignonette, And molehills swarm with ling; She hides among the greener May, And sings her love to Spring. I hear her in the Forest Beach, When beautiful and new; Where cow-boys hunt the glossy leaf, Where falls the honey-dew. Where brambles keep the waters cool For half the Summer long; The maiden sets her pitcher down, And stops to hear the song. The redcap is a painted bird, And sings about the town; The Nightingale sings all the eve, In sober suit of brown. I knew the sparrow could not sing; And heard the stranger long: I could not think so plain a bird Could sing so fine a song. I found her nest of oaken leaves, And eggs of paler brown, Where none would ever look for nests, Or pull the sedges down. I found them on a whitethorn root, And in the woodland hedge, All in a low and stumpy bush, Half hid among the sedge. I love the Poet of the Woods, And love to hear her sing,— That, with the cuckoo, brings the love And music of the Spring. Man goes by art to foreign lands, With shipwreck and decay; Birds go with Nature for their guide, And GOD directs their way— GOD of a thousand worlds on high!— Proud men may lord and dare; POWER tells them that the meaner things Are worthy of HIS care. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,Steve Shaw Date: 29 Apr 24 - 08:08 AM That poem is lovely in its simplicity, lightness of tread and lyricism (though I disagree with its ending!). With poems like that I might have come to embrace poetry in my misspent youth far more than I did, what with having been burdened by having to study the lugubrious and near-impenetrable longer works of Wordsworth at school. Clare and Wordsworth were near- contemporaries. I think "Forest Beach" is a reference to High Beach in Epping Forest, where he lived for a few years in a private asylum (he eventually escaped from it and walked for four days to get back to his village). The forest is in the range of nightingales and "redcaps" (likely the birds we call redpolls). Lime trees (lindens of old) grow in the area. They are notorious for dropping honeydew, and you learn not to park your car under one in summer. |
Subject: ADD: The Mores (John Clare) From: The Sandman Date: 30 Apr 24 - 04:51 AM John Clare Poem against enclosure (1793-1864) The Mores (John Clare) Far spread the moorey ground a level scene Bespread with rush and one eternal green That never felt the rage of blundering plough Though centurys wreathed spring’s blossoms on its brow Still meeting plains that stretched them far away In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene Nor fence of ownership crept in between To hide the prospect of the following eye Its only bondage was the circling sky One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree Spread its faint shadow of immensity And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds In the blue mist the horizon’s edge surrounds Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers Is faded all - a hope that blossomed free, And hath been once, no more shall ever be Inclosure came and trampled on the grave Of labour’s rights and left the poor a slave And memory’s pride ere want to wealth did bow Is both the shadow and the substance now The sheep and cows were free to range as then Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men Cows went and came, with evening morn and night, To the wild pasture as their common right And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain Then met the brook and drank and roamed again The brook that dribbled on as clear as glass Beneath the roots they hid among the grass While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along Free as the lark and happy as her song But now all’s fled and flats of many a dye That seemed to lengthen with the following eye Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free Are vanished now with commons wild and gay As poet’s visions of life’s early day Mulberry-bushes where the boy would run To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done And hedgrow-briars - flower-lovers overjoyed Came and got flower-pots - these are all destroyed And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,Steve Shaw Date: 30 Apr 24 - 03:57 PM That's a truly heartfelt lament, though looking back at golden ages is a risk. I wonder what he'd have thought of the depredations committed in the name of "progress" in the century and a half since his passing... |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 08 May 24 - 12:27 AM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9837ejDAWfQ Toby Jpnes reads nightingales nest. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 11 May 24 - 03:53 AM why was he put in an asylum? |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,henryp Date: 11 May 24 - 05:06 AM As a starting point, from Wikipedia; Clare became an agricultural labourer while still a child, but attended school in Glinton church until he was 12. In his early adult years, Clare became a potboy in The Blue Bell public house and fell in love with Mary Joyce, but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade them to meet. On 16 March 1820, Clare married Martha ("Patty") Turner, a milkmaid, in the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Great Casterton. Clare was constantly torn between the two worlds of literary London and his often illiterate neighbours, between a need to write poetry and a need for money to feed and clothe his children. His health began to suffer and he had bouts of depression, which worsened after his sixth child was born in 1830 and as his poetry sold less well. Clare's last work, the Rural Muse (1835), was noticed favourably by Christopher North and other reviewers, but its sales were not enough to support his wife and seven children. Clare's mental health began to worsen. His alcohol consumption steadily increased along with dissatisfaction with his own identity and more erratic behaviour. He was becoming a burden to Patty and his family, and in July 1837, on the recommendation of his publishing friend, John Taylor, Clare went of his own volition (accompanied by a friend of Taylor's) to Dr Matthew Allen's private asylum High Beach near Loughton, in Epping Forest. Taylor had assured Clare that he would receive the best medical care. Clare was reported as being "full of many strange delusions". He believed himself to be a prize fighter and that he had two wives, Patty and Mary. He started to claim he was Lord Byron. Allen wrote about Clare to The Times in 1840: It is most singular that ever since he came... the moment he gets pen or pencil in hand he begins to write most poetical effusions. Yet he has never been able to obtain in conversation, nor even in writing prose, the appearance of sanity for two minutes or two lines together, and yet there is no indication of insanity in any of his poetry. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,henryp Date: 11 May 24 - 08:35 AM Overnight, in the eyes of the law, enclosure turned local people hunting for food into poachers. If caught, they now faced severe penalties; after all, it was the landowners who sat in judgement on them! While there are many songs about poachers - and the punishment of transportation - songs about the enclosures themselves are elusive. These are the final lines of 'The Mores', to complete the lines given above. They express Clare's thoughts and feelings about the new walls and boundaries. On some estates, the villagers were obliged to build the walls that kept them out! Clare's lines are continuous; the breaks are mine to make them a little easier to read. Fence now meets fence in owners’ little bounds Of field and meadow large as garden grounds In little parcels little minds to please With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease Each little path that led its pleasant way As sweet as morning leading night astray Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host That travel felt delighted to be lost Nor grudged the steps that he had ta-en as vain When right roads traced his journeys and again - Nay, on a broken tree he’d sit awhile To see the mores and fields and meadows smile Sometimes with cowslaps smothered - then all white With daiseys - then the summer’s splendid sight Of cornfields crimson o’er the headache bloomd Like splendid armys for the battle plumed He gazed upon them with wild fancy’s eye As fallen landscapes from an evening sky These paths are stopt - the rude philistine’s thrall Is laid upon them and destroyed them all Each little tyrant with his little sign Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine But paths to freedom and to childhood dear A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’ And on the tree with ivy overhung The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung As tho’ the very birds should learn to know When they go there they must no further go Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade goodbye And much they feel it in the smothered sigh And birds and trees and flowers without a name All sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes Have found too truly that they were but dreams |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,henryp Date: 11 May 24 - 10:38 AM John Clare, 13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864. His birthday is celebrated in Helpston, Cambridgeshire, by the John Clare Society. 2024; This year we are having a two-day Festival, starting on Friday July 12th with the traditional laying of the Midsummer Cushions on John Clare’s grave, from 1pm. To end the day there will be a Choral Evensong in St. Botolph’s Church at 5pm and then a lively evening at the John Clare Cottage with local folk musicians from 7:30pm. Please come along, everyone is welcome. On Saturday July 13th, John Clare’s birthday, the John Clare Society’s AGM will take place in St. Botolph’s Church from 10am for about an hour. This will be followed at 11am by a fascinating talk by the Rector, Gary Alderson, on the Rev. Charles Mossop. There will be many things to do and see in the afternoon, and to end the day a concert by The Black Smock Band who are coming all the way from Brighton. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle Date: 16 May 24 - 09:46 AM i DID A GIG IN A PUB IN hELPSTONE YEARS AGO. i MENTIONED cLARE TO SOME GUYS I THE BAR AND THEY ASSURED ME cLARE'S COFFIN HAD BEEN LAID ON THE TABLE AT WHICH WE WERE SITTING. Probably they were winding me up.. I remember asking at college why Clare's insanity had attracted attention whereas Blake , who seemed ten times more crackers was allowed to go on his merry way. My lecturer explained that Blake had been able to deal with his affairs and finances etc, whereas Clare was not that lucky. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 16 May 24 - 11:30 AM or possibly Blake did not criticise the political establishment and be against enclosure, very handy to lock up political agitators and say they are nuts? |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Jack Campin Date: 17 May 24 - 04:51 AM Blake was in favour of the French Revolution. Way more overtly radical than Clare. Clare was just crazier, the authorities got it right. Hoelderlin too, there was a lot of it going round. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: mayomick Date: 17 May 24 - 07:03 AM before the enclosures drove people off the land to work in dark satanic mills, Jerusalem had been buildeth on England’s green and pleasant land |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: mayomick Date: 17 May 24 - 07:46 AM Blake was certainly one of the most outspoken critic of the political establishment in his day; I don't think either he or Clare were really crazy -maybe Clare was because he had been driven mad by the times Satirist Jonathan Swift left money in his will to found the first mental asylum in Ireland . He wrote about how ,before the seventeenth and eighteenth century land seizures in Ireland, it would have been possible to count the number of genuinely mad people in the country on perhaps two hands . Within twenty years of the confiscations you couldn’t walk a road or laneway without encountering desperate lunatics . |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle Date: 18 May 24 - 08:13 AM Yes there must have been a mass nervous breakdown as a result of the land enclosures. I think it was put forward by AL Lloyd that the tremour in the singing voices of the peasantry was a sympton of an entire class of society dispossessed and alienated. I wondered if the Peter Bellamy tremour was an attempt to convey some of this residual angst. Does anyone else remember The Celebrated Ratcliff Stout Band? They had a very nice song about John Clare on one of their albums. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,The Baker is dead Date: 18 May 24 - 12:50 PM Unlikely Bellamy was not politically radical, he often mocked lefties. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle Date: 18 May 24 - 04:44 PM I don't think you have to be particularly 'woke' to recognise the utter wretchedness of the poor in those years, and maybe attempt to recreate an authentic pre 20th century folksong. I'm not saying it is my approach to folksong, I just know that these were some of the thoughts current at the time, and indeed Lloyd's writings are still there for you to see. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: mayomick Date: 19 May 24 - 02:06 PM I must check Lloyd on the tremor in the singing voices of the peasantry -how he would have known about it .Presumably the change was mentioned by commentators close to the times the enclosures were taking place? |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle Date: 19 May 24 - 05:52 PM Must have been in Folksong in England - its the only one of his books I've read, I think. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: GUEST,Roderick A. Warner Date: 20 May 24 - 09:54 AM ‘I had imagined that the worlds end was at the edge of the orison.’ Those interested in the life and various works, musical and textual, of John Clare may find the book ‘Edge of the Orison’ by Iain Sinclair, 2005, worth a look. Sinclair undertook with various companions to shadow John Clare’s escape from High Beach asylum near Epping Forest, east of London and the 80 mile walk back to his home near Peterborough in search of his lost love, Mary Joyce, a ghost already as she was three years dead. Sinclair deals in oddities and the unusual backed with wide ranging scholarship and his wife Anna had a distant familial relationship to Clare so he uses this to ground the book literally. Another unusual link: Lucia Joyce, the supposedly schizophrenic daughter of the Irish writer James Joyce, in the twentieth century had ended up in the same Northampton asylum where Clare spent his remaining years and Samuel Beckett, who had been a secretary for Joyce in his younger days and had had a relationship with Lucia at one point visited her in the years up to her death in 1982 and supported her financially. Beckett was also distantly related to Sinclair, a point he makes glancingly later in the book. These coincidences and textual resonances appealed to the writer and poet Sinclair, given his previous ambulatory explorations of London under the sign of psychogeography. From this dense cluster of relationships and coincidences he produced a fascinating book that walks Clare back literally into the nineteenth century, places him among his literary influences and moves him past the clumsy titles of ‘peasant poet’ and ‘madman’ into the wider literary canons and ‘history.’ Clare was someone who came to London and did not prosper, beyond his initial frothy fame. Sinclair as another outsider who made his bones eventually in London is an ideal writer to approach his ghostly predecessor. There are many resonations between Sinclair, Clare, and others in the game. Sinclair is very good at teasing these out, resounding them, as it were. As witness the title: Clare spells ‘horizon’ ‘orison’ and the book bounces nicely off the resemblance sonically and historically. Edge of the world. Prayer/discourse. Clare’s original journeys to London at the time when he was displaced geographically and spiritually by the unsettling psychological damages of the Enclosures provoked no attempt to artistically accommodate the city into his work. London was not his subject. By comparison, Blake was the poet of London and had the visions (literally) of his words and art to accommodate its demands. Clare’s life had been leavened by nature, the flora and fauna of a rough rural England now irrevocably changed. London unmade him. So to High Beech. Beyond that… much is speculation. Which is Sinclair’s forte… |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 21 May 24 - 02:37 AM Lloyds writings and scholarship have been questioned many times on this forum. |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Joe Offer Date: 21 May 24 - 02:55 AM Sandman, the Germans would say, "Na und?" (and so?) What is it about Lloyd's writings and scholarship that have been questioned and by whom, and how does this apply to John Clare? |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 21 May 24 - 02:08 PM read this joe in relation to peter bellamys tremor Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle - PM Date: 19 May 24 - 05:52 PM Must have been in Folksong in England - its the only one of his books I've read, I think. Joe there have been numerous threads discussing his scholarship on mudcat. BrianPeters is one who has questioned his scholarship , look up bert songs on this forum |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle Date: 22 May 24 - 11:58 AM Scholarship is all very well. Ievitably there is speculation about |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: Big Al Whittle Date: 22 May 24 - 12:19 PM continued In evitably there is speculation abouta subject that is by definition shroud mystery. Look at the speculation that surrounds Robert Johnson's recording sessions where he sang with his eyes averted from the men who were recording him. Some people say he was insecure playing to his social superiors. Some people thought he was hiding his ,techniques from those who would steal his ideas. Ry Cooder thought he was 'corner loading' - adding compression to the sound by singing directly at a wall. I don't think we can be sure of the correct story. We simply weren't there. In traditional music I have noticed people get very attached to their theories, which is okay if we use those theories to make decisions about performance. But we all need to face the facts that what we create is a speculation . |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 22 May 24 - 01:52 PM unaccompanied singing uses decration and embellishment, look at the irish and scottish traditions. Lloyd psoosibly made it all up, because it fitted in with his political ideology. to me his theory sounds like total bollcks |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: mayomick Date: 23 May 24 - 11:20 AM Big Al , I think it was more likely to have been speculation on Lloyd’s part .Any evidence of a mass shift towards singing with tremor by peasants or weavers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would have been noted and endlessly discussed by folklorists and historians of the period . |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: The Sandman Date: 25 May 24 - 04:53 AM I agree, mayomick |
Subject: RE: English tunes & poems by John Clare From: MaJoC the Filk Date: 26 May 24 - 10:09 AM > a mass shift towards singing with tremor by peasants or > weavers One possibility I've heard for this impression is that said old folk were simply not very good singers (my €0.02: their voices may well have also deteriorated with age and/or lack of practice). Then revivalists, listening to the field recordings, picked up the quavery pitch from them, the same way English youngsters tend to pick up Yankee accents (and that annoying nasal whine) from pop records. But this sub-discussion belongs in a different thread. We now return you to our Subject Line. |
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