Britten visited the Far East in 1956 and the following year set to music Arthur Waley's translations of ancient Chinese poems, texts that explore typical Brittenesque themes of innocence, loss and regret.
The program includes a poem about two lovers who wish to be united in heaven, although the "Two Poems" texts seem more like sad musings, full of nature imagery.
They'll either assume there's more to the poem -- perhaps out of a benighted optimism -- or reflexively blame themselves for the error (attributing the absence of any poem-text to their shoddy computer, a connectivity problem, or some sort of human error).
The result is a kind of generative orchestra that plays images, poems, texts and sound synthesis.
Alfred Corn: We already have "found poems," texts not intended to be read as poems yet, when so framed, give us some of the pleasures we expect from poetry.
Mr. Monaghan is admirably faithful to the poem's text.
A reading of the poem, the text and an audio interview with Mr. Haskell are here.
Really a long poem, the text includes these lines: "This is my mask of fidelity to truth and life.
But Whitby says The Wasteland - with a performance by Fiona Shaw synchronised to the poem's text - appealed to a non-scientific demographic.
And "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" And, for good measure, the rest of the poem's text, and every misspelling of Shakespeare, and every possible association anyone has ever had with summer's days and buds of May.
Apart from the poem, the text was primarily written and organised by Mary Shelley.
