Duration: 10′
- Flute, harp and string orchestra
- Orchestral score and parts for hire
- Gemini Publications
- Commissioned by the Shipley Arts Festival to mark the 50th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan William’s death.
A work to complement the well-loved, The Lark Ascending, a beautiful, musical response to the poem by Meredith. The Descending Blueis based on Spring, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. As I read the poem I found there were many similar resonances with the Meredith poem:
- NOTHING is so beautiful as spring;
- When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
- Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
- Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
- The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
- The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
- With richness; the racing lambs, too, have fair their fling Gerard Manley Hopkins
Perhaps this work should be called The Thrush Descending! As an acknowledgement to Vaughan Williams I have used five tunes in the work; The Springtime of the Year, Greensleeves, Down Ampney, Monks Gate and John Ireland’s My song is love unknown.