Serendipity

I think I should like to tell you the rest of the story about the poem in my last post. After I finished it, I kept having this insistent desire to put it to music. But I put it off and put it off, partly because I was busy, and partly because I'm a much better lyricist than composer. I thought about asking one of my much more talented friends to write music for it, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. The poem had a certain feel to me and I wanted that reflected in the music--but it wasn't something I could really explain so someone could capture it in melody. So I was a little stuck.

Enter Ralph Vaughan Williams.

I wish I could say I was friends with him. Unfortunately, he died in 1958. But while he was around he wrote some truly sublime music, including what I think is the most beautiful piece ever written for string orchestra. I was listening to that one day and it suddenly struck me that it had the exact same feel as my poem. I quickly discovered that the rhythm of the melody matched the rhythm of the words, and lo and behold, a few days and a bit of pirating later, I finally had the song I wanted.

So. Here is my setting of the old English folk tune "Dives and Lazarus". You might find it just a little more familiar than you expect.