We cannot recommend too highly Pat Thomas‘ 2017 Omnivore recording of The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience (a re-issue and extension of MGM’s legendary 1970 release)
See our announcement on that day – here. (and previous announcements – here and here)
See Luke Walker’s review of the collection in The Blake Quarterly
(See Maurice Eaves (somewhat qualified) review of the original in The Blake Quarterly – here)
See Steven Taylor‘s highly-informative 2022 presentation for The Blake Society – “Blake’s Tiger and the Lion of Dharma” – here. (and here)
Global Blake, the exciting new network of scholars and artists exploring the influence and after-life of Blake, (we’ve already featured them here and here), will be presenting
a free all-day symposium today Monday, Nov 4 (5:30 a.m. 1.30 p.m EST – (10:30 a.m T6.30 p.m. GMT) on Blake and Music – Musical After Lives
“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”
Barry Miles, Ginsberg biographer, will be the keynote speaker (he’s scheduled to speak 12.30- – 1.30 GMT (7.30-8.30 EST)