Films
We have created 10 filmed song performances with accompanying movements, for a groundbreaking online pilot programme within the Parkinson’s community.
1. Choose your song
2. Watch Song intro (approx 30 secs)
3. Watch Song film (piano and singer)
4. Watch Movement film (dancer) choose seated or standing
Click the song titles below to jump to the respective videos.
Sure on this shining night – Barber
This poem by James Agee is almost a lullaby for grown-ups. It’s imbued with a sense of completeness and healing that the night and the stars gift to us. There is a circularity, a sense of ‘everything will be alright’. Deeply sensuous and alliterative in its use of language, there’s a feeling of the song rolling around our mouths and ears, as the earth rolls around the heavens. And it’s as though you are showered by something that is simultaneously star shadows and kindness.
Poem:
Sure on this shining night of starmade shadows round, kindness must watch for me this side the ground.
The late year lies down the north; all is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth, hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder, wandering far alone, of shadows on the stars.
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Sleep – Gurney
This is a setting of a John Fletcher poem. We have so often performed this for those struggling with insomnia. It’s a poem of illusion, of the hinterland between reality and dreaming, imploring sleep to deceive us with some relief, if only a thought, an influence…
Poem:
Come, sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving, lock me in delight awhile. Let some pleasing dream beguile all my fancies, that from thence I may feel an influence, all my powers of care bereaving.
Though but a shadow, but a sliding, let me know some little joy. We that suffer long annoy, are contented with a thought, through an idle fancy wrought. O let my joys have some abiding.
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Paganini – Poulenc
This is the last of a set of 3 songs of poems by Louise de Vilmorin, celebrating the violin in all its mercurial glory… and it almost takes longer to describe than to sing!
Translation:
Violin, seahorse, siren, cradle of the heart, the tears of Marie Madeleine, the sigh of a queen, an echo… It is the pride of delicate hands, a horse riding over the waters, love astride a mystery, a thief at prayer, a bird… It is Puss in Boots ranging the forest, a public confession, a corset, alcohol of the troubled soul, one season barging into the other, a mirror… It is a knight, a toy escaped from happiness, a pleasure boat… and a hunter!
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Music for a while – Purcell
‘Music for a while shall all your cares beguile…’ These words by John Dryden suggest that for a short time, music can provide a balm, draw us away from our concerns and cares of life. It might take us somewhere other-worldly, fantastic, even mythic – til Alecto free the dead, til the snakes drop from her head – but perhaps when we return to our lives, the music will leave us for the better, with a meaningful resonance.
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Mai – Fauré
This poem by Victor Hugo is an absolute outpouring of enthusiasm and optimism! The call to plunge into nature, to revel in it and indulge our every sense, until all that radiance results in a flower of love, rooted in our heart.
Translation:
Since May has brought such abundance, come, let us hurl our souls into this melee! Let us enjoy the countryside, the woods, the moonbeams on the sleeping waters… the path that ends where the road begins, and beyond, the immense horizon, which so joyfully attaches heaven to the earth, like the embroidered hem of the vast blue robe that is the sky…
Come, let us enjoy the shy stars as they peep through and tumble to the ground through veils of clouds, the tree so full of birdsong and perfume, the scorching breath of the fields at midday… the shade, the sun, the sheer radiance of nature! Come, feel yourself unfurl like a double blossom, with joy on your brow and love in your heart!
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Litanei – Schubert
Schubert has set 3 verses of a longer poem by Johann Georg Jacobi; a prayer for peace on the Feast of All Souls. It’s simply a list, a litany; for departed souls.
Translation:
Peace and rest for those who lived in torment, those sated by a happy life, babies who barely tasted life… all souls, rest in peace.
Girls in love, who cried tears without number, betrayed, who reject the cruel world… rest in peace.
And those who never smiled at the sun, but who slept on a bed of thorns under the moon, that they might one day feel the warmth of God’s face in that purest light… All souls, rest in peace.
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Les berceaux – Fauré
A setting of a poem by Sully Prudhomme, this is a deeply moving song of family ties; nurture, loving and letting go. It paints the rocking vessels – the cradle under a mother’s hand and the great ships, waiting in the harbour to set sail. One leads to the other, as children grow and seek new journeys while parents cling to their presence in the cradles…
Translation:
All along the quay the huge ships are swaying silently on the tide, and pay no attention to the cradles, rocked by the hands of the mothers. But there will come a day when the women shall weep, as the young grow curious for distant horizons, lured by adventure. And on that day of goodbyes, as the ships vanish from the harbour, they feel their vast bulk held back by the souls of the cradles and the women left behind.
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Geduld – Strauss
This is a setting of a poem by Hermann von Gilm. Geduld means ‘patience’ and the poem is filled with frustration, determination! Eternity is long, but the time for growth is short – seize the day! Postponement leads to the grave; if you do not answer the call today, the chance will be lost.
(N.B. We have made no movement film to accompany this song – the picture it paints is so vivid and impassioned, we decided to keep it purely as a visualisation.)
Translation:
Patience, you say… and point your finger at the firmly locked door of my future. Is the moment that has happened worth more than the one not yet born, tell me! Can you with love alone hold back the Spring from blossoming? (Oh, if you could I would give everything…) no, Spring blossoms and then dies, and time waits for no-one.
But patience, you say… and shake your dark hair, and hourly the petals fall. And the tears we cry are wasted, as coins thrown on a grave. See how the day commands us! Do you not hear it knocking at your breast? Get up, get up! What is not done today is forever lost to tomorrow!
But patience, you say… and close your eyes, and denied is my quest for happiness. Then farewell! I shall see you no longer! You think because others can, and must wait, that I must too? I have one chance, one chance to love and kiss, one chance to blossom, like the rosebud.
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Der Musensohn – Schubert
This is a fabulous shot of energy and enthusiasm, a poem by Goethe. Music, poetry, art as a carefree child roving the world and bringing people together, life-giving, inspiring the world. It’s called the Son of the Muses.
Translation:
Wherever I go, through fields and countryside, I whistle my song, and all things keep time with me, all are moved by my song! I cannot wait for the first blossoms of Spring, and even on the icy tundra, there winter blossoms! Then those blooms vanish and find new life on the huge, cultivated hillsides.
Sometimes I am by the linden trees, and the young folk become excited by my song; the dull lad puffs himself up and the shy girl twirls coyly. You give wings to my feet, you send me far from home, but when, beloved Muses, may I rest at last on the bosom of my beloved?
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Auf Flügeln des Gesanges – Mendelssohn
Perhaps better known as ‘On wings of song’ this is a poem by Heinrich Heine. It’s an absolute flight of fancy, and will transport you to an almost unimaginable place that is exotic, sensuous, heady, but also sacred, where flowers speak and animals listen…
Translation:
On the wings of this song, beloved, I shall carry you to the banks of the Ganges river, to a beautiful place; there lies a rose-blossoming garden under the silent moonlight, and the lotus flowers await.
The violets are nudging and giggling at the stars above, the roses are whispering their sweet-scented secrets to one another, and (you can hear it in the music) a happy gazelle goes hopping by. And then in the distance, is the great rushing of the waterfall.
Come, lie down with me under these palm boughs, and we shall drink it and love it and dream our sweetest dreams…
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