[lit-ideas] 'Out of the night that covers me' (Henley/Huhn)
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 05:32:07 EST
A baritone standard? (apparently Merrill recorded it).
Out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul
in the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody but unbowed
beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade
& yet the menace of the years finds & shall find me unafraid
it matters not how strait the gate how charged with punishments the
scroll I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul.
In a message dated 3/5/2009 4:40:11 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
cblists@xxxxxxxx writes:
Actually, with two (tuberculosis of the bone). His left leg was
amputated below the knee. With the help of Joseph ("Antiseptic
Principle of the Practice of Surgery") Lister, he fought against the
diagnosis that amputation of the right foot was the only way to save
his life and kept the limb, although he was never completely cured.
----
I felt so bad after hitting 'send' about that one. But the truth is it was
an obscure fact that I learned in some obscure book (I thought) -- whereas now
it's so publicly displayed in wiki for all to see.
It was very bad of me to mention that when he was physically disabled like
that.
I cannot say I know much about "Invictus" but have a vague feeling that the
thing was set as a ballad. I do have a CD with a musical setting to the thing.
For piano and tenor, as I recall.
I also cherish some of Henley's verse in what is called 'boy's poetry', a
few collections of Victorian verse suitably selected for boarders.
I should try and find out who the composer was for the drawing-room ballad.
I would think it was the type of ballad to be sung by Santley at the St.
James's Hall. These were Boosey concerts that had the publicity effect of
distributing the sheet music among the domestic amateurs.
Those ballads had a particular structure when it came to setting verse, so
I'm interested in the Invictus because it does look pretty regular.
When I say 'particular structure' I'm thinking of Weatherly's ballads. His
'Shipmates o'mine' and 'Boys of the Light Brigade' being examples. While the
verse is monotonous, the composers manage to have a third section totally
changed to a minor key -- with occasion for virtuoso singing. 'Shipmates
o'mine'
is particularly dense and dark in the last but one verse when mention is being
made of the wreck. 'Boys of the light brigade' starts optimisically, sort of
("ubi sunt" motive), and the middle section and last but one is a very
macabre description of the battle fields.
I learned most of this stuff from a book that was sent to me by someone who
had a gift to find the obscure book that would appeal me, "Victorian
Drawing-Room ballads" -- a serious study of the form, rather than an
anthology.
The author is into the forms of 'domestic art making' and I should recheck
which opera arias were indeed part of the drawing-room show. I would imagine a
lot of duets -- and in Italian, some of them, I would imagine.
The "Invictus" does not seem Victorian but I cannot find dates for composer
Huhn. In rather bad-taste there is an American setting to the poem too, in a
CD called "The Footlifters".
Cheers,
JL
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