Finding ‘Crow’: A case study of the musical setting of recent poetry

One of Ted Hughes’s most remarkable works is one that he never completed; and yet the parts of it that he did publish became one of his most enduring poetry collections: Crow. This book, From the Life and Songs of the Crow, to give it its full title, is a vibrant collection in which the eponymous protagonist appears in multifarious forms, in a multitude of situations; a trickster, exploring the world about it and trying to find meaning and its own place and purpose within that world. In The Laughter of Foxes, Keith Sagar presents a synopsis of what Hughes first intended to be the shape for Crow, a prose narrative within which the songs and poems were to be set. With Crow being so full of its own vigorous poetical music, it is perhaps foolhardy to have even considered trying to set some of the poems to music – an act of butchery, even. Sagar’s expounding of the narrative of Hughes’s unfinished epic lead to the thought of possibly recreating by creative means something of Hughes’s intentions, in the form of a song cycle, drawing on poems from Crow and Cave Birds. The nature of the poetry dictates that this is no lyrically romantic journey, but a more expressionist telling of Crow, with a darkly austere ensemble of just two voices: a ’cello, and a baritone. It is a work in progress at the time of writing, but it has been a long journey to get this far, inhabiting the world of Hughes’s Crow and trying to find ways to express and give life to these extraordinary poems, respecting and honouring the words. This article tells something of the hopes for the project, the process and of some of the thinking behind the work being created.