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‘The Glory of the Garden’

Gardens encapsulate the fundamentals of human existence: birth, reproduction death. The eternal process of renewal we see in a garden offers a wealth of material to poets and composers alike. This Words and Music traces some of the key ways that poets and musicians have been inspired by gardens, opening with Genesis Chapter two alongside the triumphal first chords of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. Milton’s opulent portrayal of Eden in Paradise Lost offers a luxuriant vision of man’s first garden, but beneath the glittering vistas lies the threat of man’s impending fall. Joni Mitchell’s call to ‘get ourselves back to the garden’ in Woodstock signals a desire to return to our garden state which characterised the mood of her times, and echoes on into the present.
The metaphysics in their typically cerebral way, saw the garden as an ideal metaphysical puzzle, full of rich conceits to aid their exploration of man’s relationship with God. George Herbert in ‘The Flower’ takes the microcosmic world of the flower and uses it to interrogate man’s endless striving upwards to god, and the miracle of god’s ability to strike down and raise up.
But gardens have a dark side – they are the scene of death and mysterious, shadowy renewal as well as a place of seduction and subversion. The extract we hear from the Song of Solomon revels in the sensual, lushness of the garden, while Tennyson’s desperate plea for Maud to ‘come into the garden’ reveals an obsessive sexual pull which goes beyond the sedate Victorian fascination with posies and gardens. In Robert Lowell’s bleak poem The Public Garden we see the desolation of a failed relationship reflected in the autumnal dryness of a deserted public space, mirrored by Messiaen’s ghostly Jardin du sommeil d’amour from the Turangalila Symphony. Georgia Mann (producer)

Readers: Anton Lesser (AL) & Frances Barber (FB)

Haydn: The Creation, Introduction
English Baroque Soloists / Gardiner
ARCHIV 449217-2

King James Bible, Genesis 2: 8 – 10
AL

John Milton: ‘Paradise Lost’ (extract)
FB

Joni Mitchell: Woodstock
REPRISE 9362463262

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (FHB)
Chapter 1, ‘The Robin Who Showed the Way’
FB

Turina: Marche from Jardin de ninos, Op. 63
Jordi Maso, piano
NAXOS 8.570026

Delius: In a Summer Garden
Halle / Handley
EMI 724357531528

W.H Auden: Their Lonely Betters
AL

Debussy: Jardins sous la pluie
Alexis Weissenberg (piano)
DG 415510-2

Ch’u Ch’uang: Evening in the Garden, Clear after Rain
Translator, Kenneth Rexroth
FB

Ketelby: In a Chinese Temple Garden
London Promenade Orchestra / Faris
PHILIPS 400011-2

Lockman/Boyce, arr Franklin: The Pleasures of Vauxhall Spring Gardens Catherine Bott, soprano
David Owen Norris, piano
HYPERION CDA67457

Extract: A letter from Alexander Pope to Lord Edward Blount in 1719
AL

The Secret Garden by FHB,
Chapter 2 ‘The Key of the Garden’
FB

Nyman: The garden is becoming a robe room, from The Draughtsman’s Contract
Michael Nyman Band
VENTURE DVEBN55

Antoine Brumel: Sicut Lilium
The Orlando Consort
HARMONIA MUNDI HMU907398

Extract from The Song of Solomon (verses 2:1 – 5; 4:12 – 5; 1; 7:11 – 13),
FB

S. Levi arr. E. Bouskela: El Ginat Egoz
Ensemble Kol Aviv
ARION 2348735

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Maud (extract)
AL

De Falla: En el Generalife from Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Philadelphia Orchestra / Ormandy
CBS MPK46449

Fats Waller: Honeysuckle Rose
From: Ain’t Misbehaving
ASV CDAJA5174

The Secret Garden by FHB,
Chapter 9 ‘The Strangest House Any One Ever Lived In’
FB

Faure: La Roses d’Ispahan
Felicity Lott, soprano
Graham Johnson, piano
HYPERION CDA66937

Juan Vasquez: En la Fuente del Rosel
Orlando Consort
HARMONIA MUNDI HMU907938

Tallis: O Sacrum Convivum
Rose Consort of Viols
DEUX-ELLESDXL1129

George Herbert: The Flower
AL

The Secret Garden, by FHB
Chapter 13, ‘I Am Colin’
FB

Haydn: Sonata No. 60 in C major, Hob 16/50
Ronald Brautigam, fortepiano
BIS-CD-994

Byron: To a Lady Who Presented To The Author a Lock of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed At a Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden
(From Hours of Idleness - 1807)

Grainger: Counrty Gardens
RNCM Wind Orchestra / Reynish
CHANDOS CHAN9549

Delius: Walk to the Paradise Garden
Halle Orchestra / Handley
EMI 724357531528

The Secret Garden, by FHB
Chapter 20 ‘I Shall Live Forever’
FB

The Public Garden by Robert Lowell

Messiaen: Jardin du sommeil d’amour
Berlin Philharmonic / Nagano
TELDEC 573820432

Strauss: September
Karita Mattila, soprano
Berlin Philharmonic / Abbado
DG 445182-2

The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
LPO / Boult
EMI CDC7472132

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