The Wild Song

It is an old song and yet it is timeless.
Born of the Earth, its melody pulsed upward from the soil, into the roots of a tree, up its trunk, through its branches and into the air. Men and women who laboured the soil and were close to the Earth knew it.

It is ‘the wild song.’
It’s everywhere when we listen: in the sound of the wind, the waves, our hearts.
It is within us and around us. Both silent and deafening, it is the space before the breath, the rhythm of Nature.
It is who we are.

Benjamin Britten was very attached to the land in Snape, Suffolk.  He said that all of his music came from there—from its marshes, river and birdsong. Marci believes that this is perhaps most true of his folksong arrangements. He began composing them while abroad in America feeling homesick for his beloved Snape in 1941 and continued to compose them until his death in 1976.  They were the work of a lifetime. 

Marci had been studying Britten’s folksong arrangements for a year when she decided she needed to go to Snape to hear the music of that place for herself. While there, she learned more about Britten’s love of his local natural environment and discovered that at almost every Aldeburgh Festival from 1950 until 1975, Britten included environmentally themed concerts, lectures and films. She realized not only did Britten care about the natural environment in Suffolk, he believed that issues and concerns for nature were essential enough to include in his Festival programming.

From that moment, she began a five year-long journey towards the creation of The Wild Song to pay tribute to Britten and his relationship with the natural world.

The album frames a selection of his folksong arrangements performed by Marci and pianist Anna Tilbrook with nature soundscapes by the Oscar-winning composer Mychael Danna and poetry by W.B. Yeats recited by actor Sir Simon Russell Beale. 

 Marci paired each of the poems by W.B. Yeats on the album with one of Britten’s folksong arrangements with a similar theme. She chose Yeats’ poetry, and these poems in particular, because Yeats’ language resonates so naturally with the lyrics in the folksongs.

Mychael Danna’s interludes were based upon field recordings made by the shepherd and best-selling author James Rebanks. Marci approached James to take part in the project after she had read his autobiography The Shepherd’s Life. For Marci, James embodies the ideals of The Wild Song.  He lives and breathes them.

Mychael later told Marci his interludes for The Wild Song were inspired by a very moving paragraph in James’ book:

“There is no beginning, and there is no end. The sun rises, and falls, each day, and the seasons come and go. The days, months and years alternate through sunshine, rain, hail wind, snow and frost.  The leaves fall each autumn and burst forth again each spring. The earth spins through the vastness of space. The grass comes and goes with the warmth of the sun. The farms and the flocks endure, bigger than the life of a single person.  We are born, live our working lives and die, passing like the oak leaves that blow across our land in the winter.  We are each a tiny part of something enduring, something that feels solid, real and true.”     

Mychael created sonic scenes based on ambient signatures for each of his six Interludes on the album.  All of the ‘harmonies’ one hears are quotes from Britten’s piano accompaniment which have been stretched, slowed down, and/or looped.  His compositions are therefore an ‘arrangement’ or gloss on the suite of folksongs.  Some quote the piece before, some ‘continue’ the piece before, some quote the next piece and some are just nature scenes.

The Wild Song brings together Marci’s interest in cross-artform collaboration and her own love and concern for the natural world. Marci hopes that it can serve as a creative reminder that we are part of something bigger and more beautiful that we can see, and that each of us has a duty to cultivate a physical and spiritual connection with this Earth and leave it more beautiful than we found it.

Click here to order the album.

(The paragraph from James Rebanks’ book quoted above has been reproduced from THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE by James Rebanks (Penguin Books, 2015) by permission of United Agents LLP on behalf of the author. Approximately one hundred and nineteen (119) words from THE SHEPHERD’S LIFE: A TALE OF THE LAKE DISTRICT by James Rebanks (Allen Lane, 2015). Copyright © 2015 James Rebanks.)