A free, one-day, online symposium from the Global Blake Network
exploring musical settings of Blake's poetry and his inspiration & classical and popular artists.
Date:4 November, 2024 - online via Zoom. Admission: Free.
Keynote Speaker: Barry Miles
William Blake is one of the most celebrated English-language poets set to music, having inspired a myriad of renderings, ranging from Hubert Parry's classical hymn Jerusalem (1916) to Patti Smith's panegyric In My Blakean Year (2004). The answer to such popularity is not an easy one. There is a conjunction of factors that may help to explain the extensive use of his work by artists who revolutionized the artistic scene in the second half of the 20th century, which encompasses form, content and the profound transformations of his literary reception over the years.
Although the earliest setting dates back to 1863, it was only in the 1920s that Blake's reception in music started to increase more substantially. Propelled by the development of his scholarship, Blake became a favourite for classical composers, captivating the likes of Vaughan Williams, John Ireland and Benjamin Britten. In the sixties new musical genres emerged, with folk settings by the Beat poet and musician Ed Sanders in 1965, followed by Allen Ginsberg in 1970. A constellation of popular musicians and performers from the sixties and seventies such as Bob Dylan, The Doors and Van Morrison also found an abundant source of inspiration in his poetic and visual production. In the following decades the number of musical settings leaped from a few hundred to more than ten thousand embracing a wide range of music genres, consolidating Blake as one of the most ubiquitous voices of Anglophone literature in contemporary music.
The aim of this symposium is to present a comprehensive discussion of Blake's reception in music in order to understand not only the genesis and motivations of the phenomenon, but also its endurance in the digital age, when multimedia and intermediality play a central role in the dissemination of literature. It also encompasses the articulation of word, sound and image in the appropriation of his work, which ranges from album covers and posters to music settings.
Panels and Speakers (All times are GMT/London)
Camila Oliveira and Jason Whittaker will introduce the day's talks.
‘And the Song they sung was this / Composed by an African Black’: Blakean Spirituals – James Keery and Steve Clark
The ‘song’ performed by ‘Tambourine Man’ is often regarded as an invitation to Blakean ‘immortal moments’ (E595). Let if ‘the Ruins of Time build Mansions in Eternity’ (E705), in Dylan these have become ‘foggy ruins of time’, trading posts on a ‘windy beach’, where black captives may be ‘silhouetted by the sea’. The ‘magic swirling ship’ also recalls Rimbaud’s ‘bateau ivre’, a vessel finally transformed into ‘les jeux horribles des pontons’ (prison-hulk), prefiguring the French poet’s later career as slaver. (Equiano’s Interesting Narrative also stresses the ‘magic’ power wielded by the European traders). ‘Tambourine Man’ is ‘haunted‘ by memories of the middle passage: the speaker is ‘branded on my feet’, ‘too numb to step’, ’escapin’ on the run’, but still confined in chains which ‘jingle-jangle. It is also performed within the ‘love and theft’ tradition of blackface minstrelsy: Mr Tambo as a ‘ragged clown’, casting a ‘dancing spell’ upon ‘circus sands’. Race has become a hyper-sensitive issue in recent Blake studies, to the extent that his Stedman illustration, ’Europe supported by Africa and America’, is now captioned ‘deemed offensive and discriminatory’ by the Victoria & Albert Museum, which recently exhibited Sokari Douglas Camp’s sculptural reworking that print. Even an image previously regarded as explicitly pro-abolitionist cannot escape censure. If Black lives matter, is any representation by a white artist necessarily exploitative; if so, what about Black voices? This presentation will examine the mid-18th century convergence of British evangelical hymnody with African musical forms, to the extent that one might speak of the negro appropriation of Watts and Wesley. It will explore what Blake may have known of this tradition and its influence throughout his work, chart its genealogy through 19th-century blackface minstrelsy, and explore its subsequent exfoliation across 20th century culture. It will conclude by arguing that Blake's prominence in recent popular music (including but not limited to Dylan), usually attributed to celebration of enhanced states of consciousness, is inseparable from his positive ‘Responsing’ to this inheritance (FZ II)
"Relationships of ownership / They whisper in the wings": Bob Dylan and William Blake - Luke Walker
Blakean song titles such as ‘Gates of Eden’ (1965) and ‘Every Grain of Sand’ (1981) have ensured that Blake’s influence on Dylan has long been taken for granted by fans, music writers and literary scholars. The opening pages of the Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan boldly assert that ‘Bob Dylan is the spiritual twin of the English Romantic poet William Blake’, but it is typical of this oft-stated relationship that the remainder of that (otherwise insightful) scholarly volume provides no textual support for this claim, nor any analysis of what such twinship might mean for our understanding of Blake or Dylan. My paper aims to fill in some of these gaps, showing that Dylan does indeed owe a deep and complex debt of influence to Blake, although it is a subject on which Dylan himself has often been evasive and contradictory, not only in public interviews but significantly also in private conversations with fellow Blakean poet-musicians Allen Ginsberg and Michael McClure. Though I am at risk of falling into the traps that this famous trickster habitually sets for fans and critics, I will argue that there are special meanings to be uncovered within Dylan’s contradictory statements on Blake, and that these often revolve around Dylan’s personal and literary relationship with the Blake- obsessed Beats. Alongside Dylan’s interviews and reported conversations – and in addition to the obviously Blakean songs already mentioned – I will discuss texts such as Dylan’s poem ‘11 Outlined Epitaphs’, which formed the liner notes for his 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin’ and which enigmatically invokes ‘the bells of William Blake’. My paper concludes with two much more recent songs: ‘Roll on John’ (2012), in which Dylan performs a Burroughsian cut-up on Blake’s famous ‘Tyger’, and ‘I Contain Multitudes’ (2020), which – in addition to its titular borrowing from Whitman – proudly and (for once) unambiguously proclaims ‘I sing the songs of experience like William Blake’. This song has been a staple of the hard-working 83-year-old’s current tour, but had not yet been released when I last wrote on Blake and Dylan for the 2018 collection Rock and Romanticism.
Dr Luke Walker has published widely on the relationship between Romanticism and twentieth-century counterculture, with a particular focus on the work of William Blake and Allen Ginsberg. Most recently, he was guest editor of a special journal issue entitled The Artist of the Future Age: William Blake, Neo-Romanticism, Counterculture and Now.
William Blake & Visionary Cover Arts – Camila Oliveira
Ginsberg's Blake Recordings – Barry Miles
William Blake in Russian Music in 2010s – 2020s - Vera Serdechnaia
Blake’s works inspired many Russian musicians of XXI century on creating different types of music: symhpo music and alternative rock. Along with Dmirtii Smirnov (1948 – 2020), Blake’s music inspired works of some other musicians. 1) A composer and director Alexander Belousov. a. In 2010 he made a reading, with music, of Book of Los English text in Dom night club in Moscow. Than, later, as a leader of an ambient industrial project “Noosferatu”, Alexander Belousov wrote an album Book of Los (in English) in 2023. b. He staged an opera Book of Seraphim in Electrotheatre Stanislavsky (Moscow), 20.02.2020. It was based on Blake’s Book of Thel (in original and in translation by Bal’mont) and a piece of Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons (Besy) in English translation (“Stavrogin’s Confession”). This combination of Blake and Dostoyevsky can be seen earlier in Andre Gide and Czeslaw Milosz. It had nominations for the Russian National prize, Golden Mask Award 2021: “Best performance in Opera", "Best Work of the Director", "Best Work of the Composer", "Best Women's Role", "Best Male Role ". 2) Leonid Fyodorov, a leader of Russian popular alternative rock band called “Auction”. He wrote an album on Blake’s lyrics (poet Igor’ Del’finov wrote new translations for a list of Blake’s poems for this project), and staged music videos on it. This “Blake” was Leonid Fyodorov’s project on COVID lockdown (2020). It was inspired by visiting Blake exhibition in Tate Gallery in 2019 and reading Acroyd’s Blake.
Vera Serdechnaia lives in Krasnodar, Russia. She is a PhD on Literature, a professor at Kuban state university, and a theater critic. She is an author of two monographs in Russian: Small Epics by William Blake: Narration, Typology, Context (Saint Petersburg, 2012), and William Blake in Russian Culture, 1834–2020 (Moscow, 2021).
William Blake’s Poetic Rhythm in Selected Country Music by Don Williams – Sola Ogunbayo
The connection between poetry and music has long been established as both art forms involve the creative manipulation of language to invoke emotive responses in their audiences. This has been particularly evident in the country music genre which has drawn influences from various sources including blues, gospel, and folk music. In the context of country music, the songs of Don Williams stand out for their ability to tell compelling stories with a unique poetic rhythm that echoes the works of William Blake. This study seeks to examine the poetic rhythm evident in Don Williams' selected country music and draw parallels with the works of William Blake. This essay provides an overview of the country music genre and its evolution over time. This sets the context for the analysis of Don Williams' music and the unique elements that distinguish it from other country music artists. The next section focuses on the life and works of William Blake, examining his approach to poetry and the themes that recur in his works. This lays the foundation for the comparative analysis of Don Williams' music and William Blake's poetry. The study then proceeds to analyze the poetic rhythm evident in Don Williams' selected country music. This includes an examination of the metre, rhyme, and imagery used in the songs. The analysis reveals that there is a certain musicality to the lyrics that sets Don Williams apart from other country music artists. This musicality is evident in the way that Williams creates internal rhyme and assonance within his lyrics, which adds to the overall rhythmic flow of the music. For instance, in Don William’s “Rake and Ramblin’ Man”, “I Am Just a Country Boy”, “Fly Away” and “I Wouldn’t Be a Man” we observe certain indebtedness to the rhythmical patterns of William Blake’s “Songs of Experience” and “Songs of Innocence”. Don William’s influences stem from Blake’s versification, run-on lines and varied pauses. In addition, this discussion reveals the themes that pervade Blake's poetry, such as free imagination in human love, freedom of choice and the beauty of nature are also present in William’s lyrics. Finally, the study concludes with a discussion of the significance of this analysis in terms of understanding the interplay between poetry and music. It argues that by examining Blake’s poetic rhythm in Don Williams' music, we gain a better appreciation for the artistry of country music as a genre. Additionally, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the poetic tradition in popular culture and how it continues to shape and influence artists.
Sola Ogunbayo, Ph.D., is a university lecturer, author and literary critic. A regular speaker in international conferences on Romantic poetry, Ogunbayo focusses on the archetypal patterns which exist in varying cultures with specific interest in the poetic genre. He teaches in the Department of English, University of Lagos, Nigeria.
“In Satan's Mire”: Bruce Dickinson's Chemical Wedding to William Blake –Andrio J. R. dos Santos
The release of Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast in 1986 caused cultural turmoil in the United States. Accusing the band of Satanism and engendering moral panic in the process, religious groups organized public burnings of the album in hopes of keeping American youth safe from satanic contamination. Reinforcing his interests with satanic fires and forces of defiance, it is quite suitable that Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson later released his solo album The Chemical Wedding (1999), in which he addresses several of William Blake’s works. By drawing upon and incorporating his album within the heavy metal music and style that Robert Walser (1993) considers an energetic and daring type of music, Dickinson endeavors to do more than merely musicalize Blake's poems; rather, he weaves Blake's works into a musical setting that possesses its own historicity and idiosyncrasies, as well as its own cultural constructions and constrictions. From this perspective, Dickinson, in many cases, responds to Blake's poems, altering their meaning in a very alchemic way—transforming while being transformed in the process. Dickinson addresses poems, themes, and characters from Blake’s poems, illuminated books, and paintings in a variety of ways. For instance, songs such as “The King in Crimson” relates to Orc in America: A Prophecy (1793), “Jerusalem” concerns the homonymous poem, and “Book of Thel” reinterprets Blake’s The Book of Thel with apocalyptic and corporeal implications. My presentation aims to explore the creative relationship Dickinson establishes with Blake through The Chemical Wedding. I have a particular interest in identifying Blakean themes, problems, and characters in Dickinson’s album in order to discuss how Dickinson engages in a complex process of debating, superimposing, and approximating his songs with Blake’s works.
Andrio J. R. dos Santos has a doctorate in Literature – Literary Studies from the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM). He is currently associated with the postdoctoral fellowship of the Graduate Program in Literature at UFSM, holding a PNPD/CAPES scholarship under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anselmo Peres Alós. He researches and writes about gothic fiction, particularly queer gothic. He is also interested in researching and discussing the works of Romantic poets and authors from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as their modern reception.
Blake and New Age Music – Jacob Smith
Blake famously begins Milton: A Poem with the call to "Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age!" [i] That phrase has been connected to the "New Age" movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and Blake has long been recognized as an important influence on the poets and visual artists of that time. [ii] In the passage from Milton, Blake goes on to call specifically on painters, sculptors, and architects to join him in setting their foreheads against the "ignorant Hirelings." [iii] It could be argued however, that it was a cohort of musicians that best manifested his vision for art during this era. I refer to the rise of what became known as "New Age" music during the 1970s and early 1980s. In this presentation, I will outline a series of resonances between Blake and the first wave of New Age musicians, which includes Iasos, Suzanne Doucet, Stephen Halpern, Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Constance Demby, and Laraaji. Crucially, both Blake and this school of New Age musicians are legible as visionary artists. Blake has long been offered as a paradigmatic example of the visionary artist, and New Age musicians of this period are notable for the way in which they brought a similar approach to the realm of recorded music. In addition to making an argument about visionary art, I will provide historical, technological, and industrial context for the rise of New Age music, and then consider a set of shared themes and practices that connect them to Blake: these include a distinctive mode of home studio production; the interweaving of ancient and modern motifs; an interest in art's relation to mind/body dynamics; and a host of shared aesthetic tendencies.
Jacob Smith is Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at Northwestern University. He has written several books, most recently Eco-Sonic Media (2015), ESC: Sonic Adventure in the Anthropocene (2019), and Lightning Birds: An Aeroecology of the Airwaves (2021). ESC and Lightning Birds are audiobooks available at the University of Michigan Press website. His forthcoming book is Bateson's Alphabet: The ABCs of Gregory Bateson's Ecology of Mind (University of Michigan Press).
Some spiritual, political and academic contexts of Allen Ginsberg’s Blake recordings – Luke Walker
In the late 1960s, Allen Ginsberg enjoyed a level of popular recognition that was extraordinary for a twentieth-century poet. Posters of Ginsberg adorned student dormitories, and he hung out with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. Between 1968 and 1971, he devoted a large portion of his time and energy to his own recording project, setting to music and singing Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, accompanied by an eclectic group that included esteemed jazz musicians Elvin Jones and Don Cherry. In 1970 an album based on the first fruits of this project was released by MGM Records as Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, Tuned by Allen Ginsberg, but despite this major label and Ginsberg’s talent for self-promotion, it remained more of a countercultural curiosity than a hit. In 1971, Ginsberg recorded a second tranche of Blake’s Songs, with a mostly new group of musicians which notably included avant- garde cellist-cum-disco pioneer Arthur Russell. Though Ginsberg’s singing and musicianship was by now far more accomplished, no second Blake-Ginsberg album appeared out of these sessions, until finally in 2018 the entire project was released as a double album entitled The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience. As we are fortunate enough to have the legendary Barry Miles – producer of Ginsberg’s Blake recordings – here as keynote speaker, I will focus my presentation on certain specific aspects of Ginsberg’s recording project. I will explore the significance of Ginsberg’s inclusion of Blake’s ‘The Grey Monk’ alongside the Songs, as well as the project’s relationship to Hindu and Buddhist mantra. Perhaps more surprisingly, Ginsberg’s spiritual and political interest in Gnosticism is also a significant context, as he explains in his essay ‘To Young or Old Listeners: Setting Blake’s Songs to Music, and a Commentary on the Songs’. This text not only formed the liner notes to the 1970 album, but was reprinted in a 1971 issue of Blake / An Illustrated Quarterly (then known as the Blake Newsletter), alongside an insightful and open-minded review of Ginsberg’s album by Morris Eaves. Using these texts by Ginsberg and Eaves (to whom I pay tribute), I will attempt to cast light on the way in which Ginsberg’s recording project is interwoven with various spiritual, political and academic contexts.
Dr Luke Walker has published widely on the relationship between Romanticism and twentieth-century counterculture, with a particular focus on the work of William Blake and Allen Ginsberg. Most recently, he was guest editor of a special journal issue entitled The Artist of the Future Age: William Blake, Neo-Romanticism, Counterculture and Now.
Contemporary Musical Settings of William Blake’s Poetry – Cleopatra David
The poetic universe of William Blake has inspired composers from various nationalities and musical genres, spanning classical, avant-garde, folk, and pop-rock. Delving beyond established classical interpretations by composers like Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams, contemporary works such as Daniel Carr's "Three William Blake Songs" and Anthony St. Pierre's "Four Blake Songs" offer fresh perspectives. Carr's compositions, characterized by a fusion of modal and tonal language, evoke tension through polytonality and irregular beat divisions, vividly capturing Blake's themes, as seen in pieces like "The Nurse's Song" and "A Poison Tree." This article aims to analyse and compare diverse musical settings of Blake's poetry, examining stylistic elements and interpretive approaches evident in available scores and recordings. Drawing from a presentation given at a conference in Bucharest last year, held as part of the "William Blake, a Prophet of Modern Times" project, this article scrutinizes Carr's intricate piano accompaniments, which complement vocal melodies to craft evocative narratives. For instance, "The Nurse's Song" employs a tripartite structure, subtly shifting harmonies to mirror themes of nostalgia and apprehension, while "A Poison Tree" utilizes syncopation and tonal modulation to convey darker emotions of betrayal and deceit. Additionally, Gabriel Mălăncioiu's technically demanding "The Auguries of Innocence" remains unperformed due to its avant-garde nature, contrasting with St. Pierre's accessible interpretation, characterized by simple tonal-modal language and repetitive motifs. In conclusion, this article highlights contemporary composers' works and advocates for exploring and performing modern compositions inspired by Blake's poetry, urging singers to embrace this new repertoire.
Cleopatra David is a Romanian musicologist and cultural entrepreneur who earned her PhD from the National University of Music Bucharest under the guidance of composer and Professor Octavian Nemescu. Her articles and reviews have been published on Romanian journals and volumes and she is a resident of Cite des Arts Paris.
