London

2015 | 4’30”

baritone, piano

Text by William Blake

The London Blake would have known was a rapidly expanding, evolving cultural and commercial hub, and the capital of the world-leading British Empire. Perhaps it is because of this that the imagery Blake conjures up in this poem is so disturbing, as he paints London not as a progressive modern metropolis, but rather a place of misery and pain, where the proletariat must pay for the lifestyles of the bourgeoisie.

The harmonic language in this setting is discordant, making extensive use of whole-tone and octatonic scales, as well as bitonal elements. Constantly changing time signatures never let the music settle, until the final, drawn-out semi-resolution.

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