Peter Warlock -- The Curlew (Music for William Butler Yeats Poems)

'The Curlew'-- two excerpts from the song-cycle composed by Peter Warlock; performed by Alexander Young, tenor; Lionel Solomon, flute; Peter Graeme, English horn; and the Sebastian String Quartet; an Argo (UK) Aural Integrity recording, made in 1954, issued in the United States on a Westminster long-play disc, WN18022 or XWN18022. 'Peter Warlock' was the persona adopted by Philip Heseltine (1894-1930, photo), suggestive of the occult practices in which he is said to have dabbled, but necessitated, Heseltine felt, by his being deemed a failure in his true identity. Although deeply involved with music, he had little formal musical training; yet his editing of early English music and his composing, especially his song-writing, belie his background. 'Capriol Suite' is his best-known piece; 'The Curlew' is considered his masterpiece. 'The Curlew' was composed between 1920 and 1922, a setting of four poems by William Butler Yeats-- 1) He reproves the curlew [presented in this video], from 'The Wind Among The Reeds', 1899 (Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. I, The Poems, Macmillan, 1989: Poem No. 54); 2) The lover mourns for the loss of love, from 'The Wind Among The Reeds', 1899 (No. 51); 3) The withering of the boughs, from 'In The Seven Woods', 1904 (No. 82); 4) He hears the cry of the sedge [presented in this video], from 'The Wind Among The Reeds', 1899 (No. 64). Yeats did not encourage having his words made music. In 1922, the year Warlock was completing his setting, Yeats composed 'A Note on the Setting of These Poems to Music'-- "A musician who would give me pleasure should not repeat a line, or put more than one note to a syllable. I am a poet not a musician, and dislike to have my words distorted or their animation destroyed, even though the musician claims to have expressed their meaning in a different medium." Nonetheless, in the third line of the first poem Warlock set-- "Because your crying brings to my mind"-- the word 'mi-ind' is divided between two notes. But Yeats has little to complain about. Undeniably a major poet, winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature, he did not, could not, always create major poetry. Yeats's poems in 'The Curlew' are not major poems, and, if anything, it is Warlock's setting that ennobles them into unforgettability.