dublinka

Some poetry set to music works, some doesn't. You need an ear for both to be really successful. But that's pretty much a truism. John Adams set Whitman's The Wound Dresser to a score, with Nathan Gunn as baritone in 1988 and for reasons I can't decipher (because it irks me at times), it works. It really gets in under your skin just when you think you're sick of both singing and music, and want to scream. This strange sensation reminds me of the way in my past, during an infinitely boring mass, that a kind of tired resigned spiritual awareness was capable of taking hold of me, and reminding me, that at least I was alive. (Thanks for the loops D.)