My first cover with video:  

Judy Collin's


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More and various music projects on the way...

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) tone poem, The Lark Ascending, composed in 1914, was inspired by the George Meredith (1828-1909) poem of the same name written in 1881.   The poem is a hymn or paean of 122 lines to the skylark and his song, sung from higher and higher heights to spread its song to the world until for such aim the skylark is sacrificed in the stratosphere.  It is a metaphor of Christ's sacrifice.  The poem, in its expressive 19th century romantic language is sublime in its complex stream of thought on the subject of the heroic skylark.  I was so moved by the poem that I decided to set it to the also moving and beautiful orchestral tone poem composed through the inspiration of this story.  This was a painstaking discovery of where to place best the lines of the poem.  In the end, I was amazed to find just how satisfyingly both the word and tonal

compositions could, through careful timing, meet and increase their mutual impact.  The poem, short of the final closing lines, is recited up to the point in the musical composition where all new themes are exhausted and a two minute musical recap winds down to the closing strains of the solo violin, the skylark, at which point the recitation of the last lines of the poem returns to close with the fading violin, the final flight of the skylark into the highest sky. 

"click" for entire poem