DESCRIPTION:
Composer: Jared G Armstrong 1926-
Title: Never seek to tell thy love
3 verses, if told, silently the wind doth move and she, trembling cold, departs: there silently a traveller comes and there can be no denial.
Song II from the Three Songs of William Blake (© JGA May 1953)
cf. William Blake 1757-1827, posthumously publ. Dante Gabriel Rossetti for Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake Vol. II (London, 1863)

Performers: ArchiCantuor Singing for the Architectural Heritage presents classical music in support of historic venues, on this occasion a pre-performance recording by Jonathan Louth Baritone accompanied by Jared G Armstrong Composer on an upright 1938 Welmar pianoforte with a Schwander action: catch Jared's SoundCloud channel at http://soundcloud.com/armstrongjg/sets

Festival | Date: the composer's music room, 2004

Venue: Uckfield Lodge, Crowborough, East Sussex, UK

Beneficiary | Purpose: on this occasion from a private "chamber" context, ArchiCantuor's pre-take of these Three Blake Songs gave cause for David Scott-Cowan to reappraise the profile of Jared Armstrong's compositions, leading, in 2012, to a first recording and then live performance of the String Quartet in E minor, with its motivic link to the songs.

Commentary: whilst "Never seek to tell thy love" is not a poem from the sequence Songs of Innocence and Experience, it is one of William Blake's mid-life poems, a "foul sketch" from the Rossetti MS book. It would be hard to suggest this poem is about anything less than a remorse and disgust following love's rejection: often interpreted as rejection of a homophilial confession. Armstrong's three songs pass through this self-doubt of the narrator, soon to settle in one more song into the dark despair of experience. Other settings are available by composers Jean Mary Anderson, George Antheil, Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell, James David Audlin, David Nathaniel Baker Jr, Sir Granville Ransome Bantock, Alison Bauld, Jack Hamilton Beeson, Gladys M. Bell, Robert Houston Bright, Allen Stephen Brings, Edward Joseph Dent, John Woods Duke, Arthur Farwell, John Linton Gardner, Bernard Sidney Garte, Thom Ritter George, Rosy Auguste Geiger-Kullman, Arsenio Giron, Peter Alexander Goehr, Daron Aric Hagen, David Haines, Fritz Bennicke Hart, Walter Sinclair Hartley, Muriel Emily Herbert, Constance Mills Herreshoff, George Heussenstamm, Chester Edward Ide, Robert Arnold Jordahl, Horace Keats, Richard Bamford Lane, Leonard J Lehrman, René Leibowitz, Noreen I Lindner, Robert Michael Lombardo, Otto Luening, Philip James Martin, Louise Matthews, William Thomas Moore Jr, Walter Byron Mourant, Tage Nielsen, Roger Nixon, Poul Rovsing Olsen, Solomon Pimsleur, Arthur Wormald Pollitt, Theodore P Saunway, Peter Schickele, Rudolph Edward Schirmer, Nicolai Schneer, Masters van Somneren-Godfery, Robert Starer, Christopher Steel, Louise Juliette Talma, William Wallace, Ben Brian Weber, John Gerrard Williams, Luigi Zaninelli. Catch a curiously 'contented' choral setting of these rather dark words uploaded by sarasayshello at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzBAzf9PHTI and a rock version uploaded by pinokiofromtokio at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrFX44Mda4I.

Recorded by Christopher Hartland | Clipped by John Jones Art
Copyright:
music - the copyright and intellectual property of the composer;
words - public domain | http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/never-seek-to-tell-thy-love/
Original Blake illustrations - © The Trustees of the British Museum used in this video by express agreement
and public domain | http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/image/detail/Songs-of-Innocence-and-Experience.jpg
Original Blake Portrait engraving by Luigi Sciavonetti - public domain | en.wikisource.org/wiki/
Original Armstrong Portrait by Mary Comber - © The Composer
Photographic portraits - © The Performers