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Music Played
Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
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00:00
Robert Schumann
Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär (Op. 43 Nr.1)
- Performer: Angelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano); Barbara Bonney (soprano); Malcolm Martineau (piano).
- Sony Classical SK93133.
- Tr13.
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00:01
Arvo Pärt
Spiegel im Spiegel
- Performer: Tasmin Little (violin); Martin Roscoe (piano).
- VIRGIN VTDCD408.
- Tr8.
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00:05
Igor Stravinsky
Chant du Rossignol (Excerpt)
- Performer: Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz (Conductor).
- Delos DE 1601.
- Tr12.
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00:07
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
The Rose And The Nightingale Op.2 No.2
- Performer: Galina Vishnevskaya (soprano); London Philharmonic Orchestra; Mstislav Rostropovich (Conductor).
- EMI Classics 7243 5 65716 2 4.
- CD2 Tr2.
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00:10
Joe King Oliver; Clarence Williams (vocals)
West End Blues
- Performer: Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five.
- ASV CDAJA5171.
- Tr19.
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00:19
Anon
Shenandoah
- Performer: Paul Clayton (guitar and vocals).
- TRADITION TCD1064.
- Tr12.
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00:24
Henry Purcell
When I Am Laid in Earth (Didos Lament)
- Performer: The Modern Jazz Quartet: John Lewis, Swingle Singers.
- PHILIPS 8245452.
- Tr5.
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00:29
John Rutter
The Lord is My Shepherd Psalm 23
- Performer: The City of London Sinfonia; Quentin Poole (oboe); The Cambridge Singers; The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble; John Rutter (Conductor).
- COLLEGIUM COLCD100.
- Tr6.
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00:37
Heino Eller
Tone Poem Dawn (1918)
- Performer: John Digney (solo oboe); Scottish National Orchestra; Neeme Järvi (Conductor).
- CHANDOS CHAN8525.
- Tr7.
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00:45
Georges Abel Louis Auric; Arthur Laurents
Bonjour Tristesse
- Performer: Juliette Gréco.
- El ACMEM197CD.
- Tr1.
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00:49
Alfred Newman
I’m Sad And I’m Lonely (Outtake)
- Performer: MGM Studio Orchestra.
- Rhino Movie Music R2 72458.
- CD2 Tr4.
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00:52
Guillaume de Machaut
Mon cuer, ma suer from Le Livre du Voir-Dit (J-PR)
- Performer: Jean-Paul Racodon (reader).
- BRILLIANT 94217.
- CD2 Tr20.
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00:56
Trad.
A Vous Tristan
- Performer: Ensemble Gilles Binchois; Anne-Marie Lablaude (soprano); Dominique Vellard (Conductor).
- GLOSSA GCD P32304.
- Tr15.
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01:01
Enrico Toselli, André Rieu (Arranger)
Nightingale Serenade
- Performer: The Johann Strauss Orchestra, André Rieu (Conductor).
- Polydor ?06024 9874091 0.
- Tr1.
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01:05
Richard Strauss
Im Abendrot
- Performer: Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano); London Symphony Orchestra; Andrew Davis (Conductor).
- CBS CD76794.
- Tr4.
Producer’s Note: Such Sweet Sadness
The nightingales will sing no more this year but Such Sweet Sadness is in memory of these shy songsters, a muse to music makers and poets alike for many hundred years. The eighteenth century poets James Thompson and Charlotte Smith wrote of their tales of love and liberty… their tales of tender woe offered to the moon and lovers alike, while Rimsky-Korsakov composed the passionate love-song of a nightingale enslaved by a rose… and Robert Schumann’s little bird will do whatever it takes to find his mate.
Human stories are nearly always about one thing, death, the certainty of death – so said J. R. R. Tolkien… perhaps that’s why we like a sad story so… as long as it’s not too close in experience or time. So Such Sweet Sadness is full of legends, of young lovers doomed not to grow old, Romeo and Juliet, Tristram and Iseult, Bryan and Pereene; the poignancy of an old couple finally separated, the acceptance of death at the end of long life – Robert Burns’ John Anderson my Jo and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Hunter home from the hill – and that idea that seems to belong to all human civilisation, the belief that once there was a Golden Age where we found our soul mate… far off in time, never to come again and yet holding a promise that there is more… just beyond our reach and far above our mundane senses…
As I found the prose and poetry and music on offer here, it struck me how sweet sadness acts like a mirror – hence Arvo Pärt’s Spiegl im Spiegl and a book-ending of nightingales. Sweet Sadness is a sadness which does not hurt bitterly. It reflects the real world back to us but in bearable fashion… we sigh and weep over people who have endured what we have never experienced but whose immortality we envy… in much the same way that as we get older we look back to our own childhoods with misty eyes and watch our children with passionate tenderness for they do not yet know what we know and their small sorrows are ones we can do something about… Tiddly Pom.
So time to wallow and perhaps, just occasionally, laugh at ourselves and the kind of sadness we enjoy… as Jonathan Safran Foer has written “you cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness” so time to experience both at once. Let us imagine ourselves the nightingale, enslaved by a rose.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith[/rtoc]
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