Mezzo-Soprano Voice and
Piano
SKU:
BT.MUSM570360703
Composed by Jeremy Dale
Roberts. Score Only. 8
pages. University of York
Music Press
#MUSM570360703. Published
by University of York
Music Press
(BT.MUSM570360703).
English.
Jeremy
Dale Roberts ' Spoken To
A Bronze Head (2009) for
Mezzo Soprano and Piano.
This is a setting for
text by Ursula Vaughan
Williams . ' In all the
long years that I knew
her and it was a matter
of regret between us I
never set a word of
Ursula’s poetry. It was
only after her death,
when I was asked to
contribute a setting of
one of her poems to a
celebratory concert held
at the Royal College of
Music that I
‘jumped’: I knew
immediately which one I
wanted to do lines
‘Spoken to a Bronze
Head’. This was the
portrait bust of RVW made
by David McFall: not the
Jacob Epstein which
neither of them liked
very much. It stood
always in her sitting
room, a benign presence,
a‘virtual’ companion
in her long widowhood. My
setting is in an
‘arioso’ style, quite
simple and austere maybe
to match the rather
‘Augustan’ style of
the verse. It is of
course a memorial, also a
salute: and I wanted to
enshrine in it the two of
them, Ralph and Ursula.
So at the heart of it is
a clangourous,
bronze-like chord, lifted
from the last movement of
VW’s 6th Symphony, from
which I quote a passage
just before the
conclusion . - Jeremy
Dale Roberts.
Jeremy A
