Words and Music - Crushed

Readers Rafe Spall and Abigail Davies. ‘In the end it took me a dictionary to find out the meaning of unrequited’. So sings the Saturday Boy in Billy Bragg’s evocation of the pain of unrequited love. The dictionary would only have told him that unrequited means unreturned. Looking into the world of music and poetry he would have found that unrequited love is much more complex and nuanced. Schooldays are often the start, also for Gwyneth Lewis in her poem ‘To the boys I loved who never loved me’ which brings back memories of adolescence and makes an important statement in this territory: I was never made less by loving you more. Unrequited Love can leave someone a sad, winsome and even quite pathetic figure. However, in reading poetry and listening to music that dealt with this idea it soon becomes clear that once the hope is gone, how the person deals with the love and longing that remains is fertile ground. The physical decline of Miss Haversham’s dress and rooms might be shocking, and the still upper lip fortitude found in the Houseman poetry quite painful, but the determination and self–knowledge demonstrated by both are things I found to be noble and empowering. The idea of a carrying something inside that isn’t just going to go away is also explored in Simon Rae’s poem ‘Believed’. This isn’t about unrequited love, but is nonetheless a longing for something that’s never going to happen. There is perhaps in all of us a longing for the things we didn’t do, the words unspoken, people unkissed, journeys not taken. This is also touched on in Sophie Hannah’s poem To the Memory of Love where Love was Not. Unrequited Love can be painful, and the love that remains after hope has gone can be the most painful of all. Sophie Hannah reminds us that however painful the feelings, at least those feelings are there, true and present, and in some way make us real. There’s a great deal of music that can be related to unrequited love. Brahms and Berlioz come to mind for their devotions to Clara Schumann and Harriet Smithson respectively. Billie Holiday had to be there not just for the song – she sings ‘Love me or Leave me’ here – but for her own life and that voice that carries so much loss and pain so beautifully. The plangent dissonances of early string music are so reminiscent of the pains and stabs of love, and I’ve included music by Gibbons and Biber. To finish, I have included the quintet from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger where Hans Sachs, one of the most humane and complex of all operatic characters sings of how ‘the heart’s sweet burden had to be subdued’ and renounces his love for Eva. GIBBONS Fantasia No.3 Consorts For Viols Laurence Dreyfus/ Phantasm Avie AV0032 CAROL ANN DUFFY Warming her Pearls Read by Abigail Davies NYMAN Trysting Fields Film Music 1980–2001 Michael Nyman Band Virgin CDVED957 SIMON RAE Believed Read by Rafe Spall BRAHMS Intermezzo in C Sharp Minor Two Rhapsodies Radu Lupu Decca 4175992 A. E. HOUSMAN XXXI (Because I liked you) Read by Rafe Spall NOEL COWARD Mad About the Boy All Woman 3 Dinah Washington Quality TV ALLWOCD03 BEETHOVEN Variations On Bei Männern Welche Liebe Fühlen Variations for Piano and Cello in E Flat Major Jacqueline du Pré/ Daniel Barenboim EMI CMS 7630152 BEN JONSON Song to Celia Read by Rafe Spall BERLIOZ Un Bal Symphonie Fantastique Berlin Philharmonic DG 415325-2 DICKENS From Great Expectations Read by Abigail Davies TCHAIKOVSKY Pezzo in forma di Sonatina Symphony 4 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Virgin VC 7907982 JOBIM/ DE MORAES/GIMBEL The Girl From Ipanema Nigel Kennedy Plays Jazz Nigel Kennedy / Peter Pettinger Chandos CHAN 6513 HEINRICH HEINE Why is the Rose so Pale Read by Abigail Davies MOZART Adagio Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major K488 Piano Concertos Daniel Barenboim/ English Chamber Orchestra EMI 7691222 EMILY DICKENSON The Heart asks Pleasure First Read by Abigail Davies JANACEK String Quartet No.2,"Intimate Letters" String Quartets Vanbrugh String Quartet Harper Collins 13812 F SCOTT FITZGERALD Excerpt from the Great Gatsby Read by Rafe Spall DONALDSON / KAHN Love me or leave me The Very Best of Billie Holiday Billie Holiday Verve 5474942 RUPERT BROOKE Love Read by Rafe Spall SOPHIE HANNAH The Memory of Love where Love was Not Read by Abigail Davies BIBER Rosary Sonata No.1 "The Annunciation" Rosary Sonatas Pavlo Beznosiuk/ David Roblou Avie AV 0038 PETRACH Canzoniere I Read by Rafe Spall SHAKESPEARE Sonnet 149 Read by Rafe Spall GWYNETH LEWIS To the Boys I Loved Who Never Loved Me Read by Abigail Davies BILLY BRAGG The Saturday Boy Brewing Up With Billy Bragg Billy Bragg Cooking Vinyl COOKCD 107 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Sonnets from the Portuguese, XIII Read by Abigail Davies HANDEL Ombra Mai Fù La Lucrezia