In primo luogo un ringraziamento va a Shakespeare, Yeats, Wordsworth e T. S. Eliot, dei cui testi mi sono appropriato. Spero che per questo nessuno di loro si rivolti nella tomba. Un altro grazie va ai software di sintesi vocale che hanno fatto del loro meglio per sopperire alla mancanza di cantanti in carne ed ossa. Ho dovuto lavorare parecchio di cesello, ma credo che i risultati siano apprezzabili. Un orecchio non del tutto attento potrebbe ingannarsi, e se non l'aveste letto qui magari anche voi avreste pensato ad ugole reali. Ascoltare per credere.

Ho costruito atmosfere musicali che cercassero di accompagnare le parole e -in qualche modo- di "commentarle", inseguendo emozioni e stati d'animo diversi.

Sono naturalmente graditi i vostri suggerimenti e commenti, che si tratti di sperticati elogi o impietose stroncature. Ma naturalmente confido nella benevolenza dei miei 12 ascoltatori, che da subito ringrazio.

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Ecco i testi che ho messo in musica:

My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun

William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some per fumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare. she = woman

The Solitary Reaper

William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the f ield,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself ;

Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,

And sings a melancholy st rain,

O listen! for the vale profound vale = valley

Is overf lowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chaunt did chaunt = chanted

More welcome notes to weary bands

Of travellers in some shady haunt

Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thr ill ing ne’er was heard ne’er= never

In spring-time f rom the cuckoo-bird,

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings? -

Perhaps the plaintive numbers f low

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again?

Whate’er the theme, the maiden sang whate’er = whatever

As if her song could have no ending;

I saw her singing at her work,

And o’er the sickle bending;

I listened, motionless and still

And as I mounted up the hill

The music in my heart I bore,

Long af ter it was heard no more.

Home is where one starts from

T.S. Eliot

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

When You Are Old

William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.