Chris Murray

Edit : I am attaching here the Béal Festival programme for 2012 (PDF)  

I wrote a Lament for Three Voices which will be programmed at the Béal Festival 2012. The directors  of the Béal Festival, David Bremner and Elizabeth Hillard, have found me two singers who are interested in the piece and we will begin rehearsing soon.

This is an exciting time, although there are nerves about getting the lament right. I know how it should sound. I know that it is not a recitative piece, and that a lot depends on how the words are spoken and upon the spaces between the words. We came to the decision that the piece is for singers, rather than for poets to perform. I am happy about this as I felt that this was important too, but I do not know many singers and I am too long out of practice to attempt the piece.

Lament is a multi-layered chorus for three women’s voices. There is a possibility inherent in the piece that the women are phantoms and that they are unaware of it. The poem was too complex to submit for journal-publication, so I am delighted to be able to programme it in 2012.

Women singers who may be interested in performing a new piece of spoken word and have some rehearsal time over the next weeks can contact me c(dot)elizabethmurray(At)gmail(dot)com or via DM on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/celizmurray

I am linking here The Masque of Bread by George MacKay Brown, which although different in both intent and form to the Frost Masques serves its purpose as a control element. Poets are often to be found writing short plays, or in Tony Harrison‘s case, operas, like Bow Down or The Misanthrope. Discussion on Harrison’s Operatic works can be sourced here. The two pieces that I am recommending today fall between the poetry of MacKay Brown and the large-scale operatic works of Harrison. They are The Masque of Reason and The Masque of Mercy, by Robert Frost.

Whilst I am it, the Irish dramatic movement witnessed some Yeats Noh plays. My favourite theatrical text by Harrison is The Mysteries, based in his interpretation of the Medieval Mystery Plays that had been originally performed in the vernacular by the Guilds system. Harrison came to Galway to introduce and read from the text some years ago. I feel that we should have more poets working in theatrical spaces. Plath created a dramatic voice play which was recorded for the BBC , called Three Women, which is one of my favourite Plaths next to Berck-Plage.

I read the Frost Masques over the weekend and wondered if they had been produced as plays? Certainly, the text and form of poetic theatrical works can be read in books, but one requires to see the drama of the play also. For instance, while T.S Eliot‘s Murder in the Cathedral, the book, is always welcome on my shelves, I find the BBC production of the play to be perfect. I Especially like the exposition of the women’s chorus, which creeps me out every time, and which I will add a link at the end of this piece.

I am adding a JSTOR link to a discussion on the Robert Frost Masques. It is of course, second only to reading the pieces, but provides an excellent discussion on them.

This is a link to the Eliot. You can hear the scratches in the recording, which gives the entire a depth. I recommend listening to it, as it is infinitely more interesting than what actually passes for contemporary entertainment to my mind.

Related Links.

• JSTOR , The 43rd Chapter of Job
• Tony Harrison, The Mysteries
• Yeats , The Noh Adapations
• Three Women, Sylvia Plath
• Murder in the Cathedral (Part One) T.S Eliot