PROGRAMME NOTES

Let the florid music praise

LET THE FLORID MUSIC PRAISE

Auden wrote this poem in 1936 when it appeared in Look, Stranger! Dickinson made his setting in New York in 1960 and the first performance was given by him with Roger Norrington, now the distinguished conductor, as tenor on 12 February 1963 at the College of St Mark & St John then in Chelsea. The first verse of the poem celebrates the face of an admired beauty: the second refers to the power of the unloved and the breaking of all vows in death.