From its opening English Horn solo (hauntingly performed by Vicki Lee) through to its dramatic climax featuring a 2-bar quotation of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder (as noted by Herrmann scholar Bob Kosovsky), Bernard Herrmann's radio debut of his Melodram based upon John Keats poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" established his reputation as a composer destined for greatness.
There are multiple version of John Keats "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" as Keats apparently felt his original 1819 version was not quite as he wanted and, at the urging of his publisher, a revised edition was created in 1820. Debate still exists as to which version is stronger with the original "knight-at-arms" becoming the revised "wretched wight" with other changes throughout. Even at the original performance of Herrmann's version, which in the score indicates "Knight-at-arms" narrator David Ross chose to change this to "wretched knight" further revising the poem slightly.
In this newly recorded version, Author Jon Burlingame follows Ross' lead and gives a stirring new interpretation of this largely unknown work by Bernard Herrmann.
lyrics
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats 1795-1821
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
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