Memorial for a child for cor anglais and guitar

Description

Instrumental duo which speaks for itself and can be interpreted in a personal way by any who had a child (or who wished they could have had one). The melody wanders from nostalgic thoughts to brief smiling moments of remembrance and back to regret.

For those who recognise traditional liturgical melodies, you may note that the guitar quotes the “Gloria in excelsis Deo” for time to time, as a sign of hope.

The original song, for alto and guitar, was based on a poem by Carol Rumens:

The girl in the Cathedral

Daring to watch over Martyrs and Archbishops

stretched in their full length slumber

Sharp-nosed Deans Princes and Knights still dressed for wars,

as dim as bronze

slim feet at rest upon the flanks of long unwhistled hounds

Daring the chills and dusts that cling to stiffly soaring branches

This small eloquence is a stone so plain

it cannot go unread

a chiselled spray of drooping buds

a name a date an age

Susannah Starr died at ten years old

and nobody knows why her timid presence

should be commended here

while history filled the logbooks of these lives

she sat apart

a wellbred child perhaps

patient with tutors and needlepoint

perhaps a foundling saved by some lean churchman

warming to his duty

Quietly during eighteen o four

the blind was drawn

the halfstitched sampler folded

Whoever mourned her must have carried weight

and bought her this pale space

to ease his grief,

as if such sainted company could speed her journeying soul

or because he guessed the power of one short name

and “ten years old”

to strip all the clothes

from all these emperors

and rouse her simple ghost

our pointless tears.

Performed here by Ágnes Jakab (cor anglais) and András Csáki (guitar)