Songs of Inscape by Wilbur Skeels
Program Note
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), a Victorian English Jesuit priest, was a brilliant poet ahead of his time,
with very unusual views on poetic theory and practice, not to mention theology. Any musician finds in him a kindred spirit
with his concepts of 'sprung rhythm' and 'counterpointed rhythm.' 'Inscape' is a term Hopkins invented for the idea that
there is a unifying principle which "gives to any object or grouping of objects its delicate and surprising uniqueness."
Very often this principle or pattern tells him something about God. Inscape may be perceived by all the senses at once,
including music. As he writes in God's Grandeur, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."
The Grandeur of God features Hopkins almost as a modern environmentalist, concerned about human damage
to the ecosystem (a word not invented in his day). For him, oil is both a symbol of the danger and also a symbol of
Nature's healing power. The poem was written about the time of the first automobiles powered by internal combustion
engines. The music contrasts the hammering rhythm of industry with the gentleness of nature's healing and the Creator's
nurturing spirit.
The Authentic Cadence. Hopkins was a second-year student at Oxford, arguing about Authority, mastering
the classics, and falling in love with the poems of George Herbert and Christina Rosetti when he wrote this (untitled)
sonnet in 1865. A composer can hardly ignore the musical concepts built into the text: sequence, strings, authentic
(perfect) cadence, minor, dominant, and the changeless note (pedal tone?), which in this composition turns out to be the
dominant. Structurally, the music is one long, extended perfect cadence, resolving at the point of divine love and its
attraction. The opening and closing make use of modal tonalities.
At the Wedding March. Hopkins was ordained in 1877 and proceeded to serve as a missioner, or parish
priest, in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow and Chesterfield. He must have waited many times at the altar to officiate
at a wedding, and watched the bride make her triumphal entrance. This is the moment captured in the poem, the moment when
the church bells sounding the hour are drowned out by the organ's wedding march. For both priest and parents it is a
bittersweet moment, in which one privately prays a blessing on the union. Richard Wagner's opera Lohengrin, from
which comes the famous 'Bridal Chorus' used at innumerable weddings, was first produced at London in 1875. It is entirely
possible that it was played at a wedding celebrated by Fr. Hopkins. If not, it is a remarkable coincidence, which the
composer could not avoid exploiting, that the lyrics fit that melody so well!
Peace. It is a mark of every authentic spiritual journey that one wrestles with, argues with, God.
Hopkins had his moments of struggle. In this poem the dove of Peace refuses to lodge permanently with him (how can God
allow evil to happen?), but there is a realization of two relevant truths: that Patience must be learned before Peace,
and that Peace is not passive but active and creative. It is in fact the brooding spirit of God who appears in the first
song of this cycle. The sopranos carry the burden of a winding, whining, frustrated melody over the argumentative
repetitions of the other voices, until the minor key resolves to major in submission to the healing answer.
Pied Beauty is a doxology to the variegated, multi-colored beauty of creation, and is Hopkins at his
virtuoso and characteristic best. It is perhaps his best-known poem. Behind the dazzling changeableness of things he also
sees typically the enduring changelessness of the Creator. That idea is suggested musically by the ostinato bass,
eventually sung in unison for the last stanza while the piano adds the 'couple-color' of the black and white keys.
From the program notes for the premiere performance:
Los Robles Master Chorale, California, May 2005.
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