Week 3

Started by listening to Gerald Finzi’s Childhood Among the Ferns from his song cycle, Before and
After Summer Op. 16.

We wanted to hear as many examples of ‘word painting’. What is word painting?

Allusion or reference of the music to the text.

What is the poem about? Injustice of having to grow up – a childhood memory, then back to the
present.. Themes of shelter, permanence and lack of (the leaking ferns - and pretending they aren’t -
is a refusal to accept that childhood is not a permanent refuge?

What is the expressive character? Are there more than one?

Ability to hear the lyrics – how do they couple with the music.

Some examples:

Tall stemmed ferns – drawn out bar of 5/4 with contrary motion

Rain – ostinato/staccato

Strengthening rain – faster pattern

Rivulets – running right hand

Piercing drops of rain in the left hand – heavy, staccato, punching through the texture.

Sun bursting – note same material as opening – priming. Warmth, ascending, ii added ninth

Different expressive character at the end (form “limp”) – resentful, bitter, desolate. Minor tonality,
low piano register

Ending on tonic 6/4 of Bb Minor – (from Eb) unresolved, distant, questioning, aloof, unrelated

Childhood among the Ferns

by Thomas Hardy

I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,

Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.

The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,

Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned,

With pride, my spray-roofed house. And though anon

Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
Making pretence I was not rained upon.

The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath

From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
I said: ‘I could live on here thus till death;’

And queried in the green rays as I sate:

‘Why should I have to grow to man's estate,
And this afar-noised World perambulate?