Composer and pianist: Barbara Amell
Soprano: Dru Rutledge
When setting a poem by George MacDonald to music, it is helpful to know that MacDonald had his own theories regarding the blending of these two art forms. “Poetry,” he reportedly told a lecture audience, “especially required to be read aloud. It was meant not for the eye but for the ear . . . He could count on his fingers easily the men he knew—and the women too—who seemed to have a delicate appreciation of spoken sound, whereas there were multitudes who had it in regard to instrumental or singing sound, but the appreciation of the change of vowels, of rhythm, of measure, whether it was from the lack of education in that direction or the lack of natural gift, seemed to him to be a rare thing. If by reading aloud anything could be done to make the charm, the melody of verse—which was the change of vowel sound in the verse—felt, or to make the power felt, or the rhythm felt, or the whole tone of the thing, which lay at the root of it all felt, then reading aloud was the right thing to do.”
One of MacDonald’s most frequent lecture subjects was The Art of Poetry, Illustrated by Tennyson’s Lyrics, in which he emphasized that the foundation of poetry must involve musicality. “First of all, they wanted music. If the first thing they found on examining poetry was that it had not music, then to the fire with it—it was an imposter! . . . But they wanted ten times more than music. They wanted strength, and if they had strength, music would mostly come.”
MacDonald always referenced the intermingling of poetry and music in his lectures on John Milton. “If poetry is worth anything, it ought to be musical . . . Why not wrote prose, if you do not make it musical? . . . No line of Milton’s sinned against music, which embodied all the laws of order and beauty.” MacDonald believed that the organ music of Milton’s father had been a major influence upon young Milton’s poetry. “His brain was in early youth flooded with the sounds of music from the organ in his father’s house; and his (the lecturer’s) conviction was that in Milton’s blank verse—the first grand blank verse that ever was written—could be heard over again, when it was read aloud, the grandeur of the music of the organ.” In MacDonald’s novel Alec Forbes of Howglen, the child Annie reads Milton’s Paradise Lost, “of which when she could not make sense, she at least made music—the chorus of old John Milton’s organ sounding through his son’s poetry in the brain of a little Scotch lassie who never heard an organ in her life.”
The artistic and spiritual connections between music and poetry are surely best brought out by the quality of the inspiring source. I was privileged to compose songs set to George MacDonald’s poems, and a suite for piano inspired by his Dealings With the Fairies for some of the past C.S. Lewis & Friends Colloquiums at Taylor University. Thanks to Jess Lederman’s generosity, composers have the opportunity to find their musical inspiration in the poetry of George MacDonald for the bicentenary celebrations. My choice, “Love Is Home,” is from MacDonald’s Violin Songs. This poem appealed to me for its combination of precision and wildness, representing both the duty and the freedom involved in coming home to the God worth believing in. My sincere thanks to sublime soprano Dru Rutledge for singing it so beautifully.