On Friday evening one of the members of our parish, a bass in the choir, in order to celebrate a birthday, a day of rememberance, and an anniversary, put on a performance by this name: Lust, Vengeance, Exile & Loss. The performance was described as considering the consequences in a lighthearted recital of works. The pieces included works by Handel, Vaughan Williams and Gershwin.
A wonderful evening spent in a beautiful church scented by old wood, wax, and thousands of hours of contemplation, surrounded by old friends and congregants coming to celebrate community and a love of magical music and song. The singing was captivating; one of those performances where you can simply let yourself be carried away by the beauty.
Reading the program notes, I saw that the nine pieces, Songs of Travel, set to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams were actually poems by Robert Louis Stevenson - one of my favorite authors and poets.
On returning home, I looked up Songs of Travel and Other Verses by R.L. Stevenson as I was not familiar with any of them. I will run the nine pieces (a subset of the much larger collection). Not quite of a kind with A Garden of Verses, but some moving pieces none-the-less.
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