When Music Sounds (2018)(Arrangement)

REVIEW OF “WHEN MUSIC SOUNDS” (Arrangement with String Quartet and Piano Accompaniment) 

When Music Sounds by Ronald Perera (b. 1941), formed a trilogy setting three famous poems about music: Walter de la Mare’s “When Music Sounds,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Music, When Soft Voices Die,” and Emily Dickinson’s “Musicians Wrestle Everywhere.” In the first stanza of de la Mare’s poem, the instruments alternate with the chorus as though inspiring them to declamation. An enchanting moment came, though, when the chorus and instruments united in the more intimate second stanza to describe the beauty of naiads rising out of the water before the final stanza returned to the fanfare-like mood of the first. Shelley’s poem speaks of olfactory and aural memories, likening music vibrating in the memory to love those slumbers on even when its object is gone. The composer’s colorful and sumptuous harmonies fit the text well, and Hodgkins elicited a lovely, clear tone from his singers. While Dickinson’s poem refers to wrestling and “silver strife,” Perera’s setting, using largely introspective and searching music, underlined that it is metaphorical. The final stanza (“Some say it is the spheres at play!”) opened forte but closed reflectively on a lush but questioning chord. 

The Boston Musical Intelligencer 
November 12, 2022