Scorch
MIDI
AcrobatPoem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)
Scored for harp*, 2 flutes, mixed-voice choir (SSAATTBB), and soprano solo
* an electronic keyboard with a full set of octaves and a decent harp-like timbre may be substituted
Initial sketches 29/30 September 2001
Composed 15 December 2003 — 27 May 2004; 225 bars.
| Score. | Scorch | (52 KB) | MIDI | (74 KB) |
| Sample pages from score. | Acrobat | (125 KB) | ||
| Duration: | 7′ |
Music, scores, and MIDI file, are all copyright © 2004 Philip Legge. All rights reserved. The sample pages in Acrobat have printing disabled.
“The poem ‘Kubla Khan’ by Coleridge has been a favourite of mine for many years, but the inspiration to set it to music – originally for female voices with harp accompaniment – came to me on a holiday a couple of years ago, when I scribbled down a fragmentary page or two.
“Coleridge had been in self-imposed retreat at a country farm-house when he wrote the poem, and had been taking opium purportedly as a relief for some illness, so after reading a travel book with an exotic description of Kublai Khan’s palace, he had an extremely vivid poetic dream. Unfortunately after he awoke he was interrupted while in the middle of writing it all down, and later on he couldn’t remember the poem or the dream; so what little of the poem that remains is very evocative.
“Unlike Coleridge I can’t claim to have been inspired by an opium-influenced dream, but most of that musical fragment I wrote has found its way into the current composition in one form or another. The poem – and my music as well – consists of a dreamy and kaleidoscopic series of images and motifs, some of which recur and connect overtly or subliminally. The impetus of a performance led me to expand the work to incorporate two flutes as well as full mixed-voice choir, and a small solo for soprano.”
Kaleide Theatre, RMIT University, Melbourne
June 4, 2004, 7.30 pm
Flutes: Karl Billeter, Nick Adler
Soprano solo: Sarah Chan
Keyboard (quasi arpa): Michael Winikoff
RMIT Occasional Choral Society, conducted by Philip Legge
(Or, a vision in a dream. A fragment)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.