William Blake‘s famous poem, The Lamb, has been set many times to music. Most of these settings evoke a beautiful pastorale scene, much like what we heard yesterday. You know – green field, sheep bouncing around, flowers, happy little trees springing up in the background.

That’s all nice, but while the poem talks about ovines, it’s not exactly pastorale – it’s a little on the cryptic / mystical side. And then there’s Blake, who had religious visions and his own independent set of Christian-based beliefs, and hated the Church of England. This poem is not a Sunday-school rhyme for kids to recite. That’s why the winner of the “best setting of this poem award” goes to John Tavener.

If the next paragraph is confusing, don’t worry; you don’t need to understand it to enjoy the music. 🙂

Just like Blake’s poem, Tavener’s music has a simple exterior and a complex interior. It opens with a single voice melody which only uses four pitches. The second voice joins, singing the same melody, but inverted – so when voice 1 goes up a major third, voice 2 goes down a major third. The effect is a “mirror image” of the melody, and it’s haunting, especially as the texture is so transparent – there is no noisy accompaniment to cover up the strange sound. After this, a new musical phrase is introduced, now employing retrograde motion – the melody is split in half, and sings 7 notes forward, then reverses and sings 7 notes backwards. Then, naturally, voice 2 enters, singing the same phrase with retrograde motion, inverted to a mirror-image of voice 1.

Is your head spinning? Here, maybe this awesome graphic will help.

or maybe not …

The music continues with more of this mirror-image effects, just enough edge to make you listen closely, but not so much as to make you turn away. Finally, the last part of the poem is stated in very simple, traditional harmony, using a minimum number of pitches and harmony. And it’s chilling.