Melodys of Earth and Sky (2021-24)
New version for actor & chamber ensemble (10 players)
Thursday, 22th August, 2024
Julian Philips has just completed a new version of his Melodys of Earth and Sky, reimagined as a suite for actor and a chamber ensemble of ten players.
The work has been commissioned by this year’s Presteigne Festival and receives its premiere on Thursday 22nd August 2024 with acclaimed actor, Anton Lesser, and the Presteigne Festival Ensemble conducted by George Vass.
Not just one of the most powerful poetic voices of nineteenth century rural England, poet John Clare was also an accomplished fiddle-player and collector of traditional folk melodys, ‘pricking’ down 263 in two books of fiddle-tunes. Melodys of Earth and Sky is an ongoing creative project that investigates the interrelationship between these two sides of Clare’s nature – the poet and the musician.
In its first version, Melodys was conceived as an instrumental songbook of selected Clare tunes which Philips creatively transcribed in 2021 for just clarinet and violin. For its subsequent NMC Recording, released in March 2021, the nine movements of Melodys were interspersed with Clare readings, recorded by actor Toby Jones, chosen thematically to resonate with the themes and character of the music.
This new version of Melodys, now a suite for actor and a larger ensemble of 10 players, seeks to bring these chosen Clare texts into closer alignment with the music. Clare’s words are no longer separate; they are embedded within the fabric of the music, thereby releasing their musicality. With a richer colour palette, Melodys’ sequence of Clare pictures is intensified, ranging from melancholy to sorrow, from wonder to inebriation and comedy, from intrigue to exuberant joy.
Melodys of Earth and Sky celebrates the legacy of Clare as poet and musician, while also offering vivid snapshots of rural life in Clare’s early nineteenth century England – its ways of life and traditions gradually disappearing in the throes of industrial revolution.
