“Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory.”
These are the opening lines of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous 1824 poem, a meditation on the eternal nature of memory, sensation, and love.
English composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941) created an a cappella choral setting of the poem in 1907. The opening phrases pay homage to the English madrigal tradition. Visions of mortality are painted tonally with a plaintive sighing gesture. The final notes drift into a serene and blissful eternal sleep.
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
Recordings
- Bridge: Music, When Soft Voices Die, H.31 Tenebrae, Nigel Short Hyperion Records
Featured Image: “The Bridge, Bridgnorth” (1901), Philip Wilson Steer