Reasons not to do a PhD on Milton

[steepholm]

Armando Ianucci gave his up, according to Radio 4, in part because he couldn't take Paradise Lost seriously after realizing that its opening lines could be sung to the Flintstones theme tune. Mind, you have to do some strange things to the verse to get this effect:

Of Man's First - Disobedience - and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree

[Flintstones, meet the Flintstones they're the mod-
ern stoneage family.]

You also need a quaver rest before the first Flint, as in the opening of Beethoven's Fifth. I begin to suspect that Ianucci had other issues.

Singing Milton is nothing new, of course. My mother memorized bits of PL when she was at university by setting it to well-known tunes, and later my own childish enquiries about the doctrine of predestination were sure to answered with a lusty rendition of the following, to the tune of Chopin's Funeral March:

Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell;
They themselves decreed their own revolt, not I.
If I foreknew,
My foreknowledge
Had no influence on their fault.

The passage works remarkably well with the Funeral March. The trouble is, the passage itself is wrong - as I realized only when I came to read Paradise Lost for myself. There's a bunch of lines missing in the middle, for one thing, and an added pronoun. More seriously, Chopin has somehow turned the blank verse into a limerick, if a rather gloomy one.

I'm not immune. When I learned guitar as a teenager I spent a lot of time setting the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and I'm still unable to read them without my musical versions ringing in my head. But then, Blake himself was said to have sung rather than spoke his Songs - so maybe that's not such a bad thing?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

As long as the music is good, why not? (Though someone once ruined poetry for me for a very long time after telling me that most could be recited to "Simple Gifts" after which I began hearing everything in that ditty, which turned it all to snot.)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Personally, I can never read the beginning of Spenser's Faerie Queene without singing

A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine

to the tune of "The Rain In Spain" from My Fair Lady.

(Now once again, where did he prick? On the plaine, on the plaine! And where's that blasted plaine?)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh my, I think you've infected me with that one!

[gillo]

And the tune of "Singing in the Rain" fits neatly in counterpoint to Beethoven's Ninth. ISIHAC has made a legend out of such stuff. And I bet you can't get all sixteen lines of the first sentence into

The Flintstones

!

I'd have thought the Songs of Innocence might be easier to set than Experience. Though the

Sick Rose

Boogie would be a good thing to create. And London demands a blues setting:

I woke up this mornin'
Wandered thru each charter'd street. (Oh yeah)...

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I'm remembering that The Verve did a version of "London" or something very close to it (I don't think they got the harlot or the marriage hearse in, which is a shame). They didn't do it as a blues though.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My "Sick Rose" was a kind of waltz, fwiw!

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Emily Dickinson. "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

Or did you already know that?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Common measure, innit? You can do lots more than Dickinson.

I can only remember poems when they are sung, but then I do so quite well, which puts me in the odd position of being able to remember "Johnie Armstrong" in every detail, for example, but struggling after line 3 of "Lycidas", or (yesterday, so it rankles) nearly misquoting the *first two* line of "An Horatian Ode". Either that or I have poor taste. (Not that "Johnie Armstrong" is a bad poem, but it's not quite in the Milton or Marvell class). Himself has a perfect memory for anything in verse, which exerts no quality filters at all, thus his repertoire includes among other things, all of "Tam O'Shanter", "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle", great swodges of Tennyson and Browning, and rejected National Song Contest entries from the 1970s. I recently met an undergraduate with the same facility. "It's a curse," he said morosely. "You remember lyrics by The Field Mice."

[calimac.livejournal.com]

But it's more painful to sing it with Dickinson. I've seen people flee from the room.

True enough about song lyrics. I learned how to spell "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch" after it got turned in to one, letter by letter.

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I used to have a tutor colleague who used to make it sound rather folky and mournful; you know sometimes the way a sad song is the more touching for having an inappropriately jaunty tune? She was a good singer though. And none of her undergraduates ever misquoted Dickinson... Tell me, did you use the song to spell Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantisiliogogogoch just there, or did you cut and paste like I did?

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I type slower than I sing, so I had to back up a bit, and then I double-checked it.

Jaunty and mournful can be strange combinations. Try the beginning of Poe's "The Raven" to "Deck the Halls".

Once upon a midnight dreary
Fa la la la la, la la la la
As I pondered, weak and weary
Fa la la la la, la la la la

Childhood experiments with piano rolls (yes, piano rolls) revealed that Sousa's jaunty "Stars and Stripes Forever" slowed down to a crawl becomes an effective Yiddische lament.

[sovay]

Of Man's First - Disobedience - and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree

*ksnerk*

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

But then, Blake himself was said to have sung rather than spoken his Songs - so maybe that's not such a bad thing?

The folk singer, Roy Bailey, used to sing Blake's 'The Garden of Love', which I in turn learned from a record. I can still recite it, almost the only poem I can recite in its entirety, but while I'm saying out loud, I'm still singing it in my head.

[gillo]

I have exactly the same thing with Byron's "We'll Go No More A-Roving", which I first encountered at the Durham University Folk Club *ahem* years ago, sung to a beautiful setting by a girl called Rosie Lyons.

[(Anonymous)]

/houseboatonstyx here/

I love that sort of thing!

There's a Roger Miller song...

Grape wine in a Mason jar
Homemade and brought to school
By a friend of mine
And me and him and this other fool

...whose music fits "Crossing the Bar."

It's got Hopkinsesque sprung rhythm, too.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I love that sort of thing!

There's a Roger Miller song...

Grape wine in a Mason jar
Homemade and brought to school
By a friend of mine
And me and him and this other fool

...whose music fits "Crossing the Bar." It's got Hopkinsesque sprung rhythm, too.

And "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes" goes to the tune of "Old Man River."

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Har.
I keep saying this at your site:
Butt;
do you think, I may quote this entry at theboringclub (a completely useless place to be, needless to point out, wherefore you are hereby heartily, no: boringly invited over) because I happen to think, many of the heavily snoring menbers may need it, in case the ever wake ("up")?
Please.
& welcome to sleep in one of our leather fauteuils...(yes, it´s a compliment, of sorts).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course - be my guest. I only hope it's sufficiently soporific!