Description: | Popular Song is an extract from Façade- an Entertainment. Façade is a bunch of poems by Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), and the poems were recited over an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton. Later, the music -without the poems - was used for a ballet (cf. Wikipedia).
The poem is rather on the eccentric side, a bit alla Caroll. Here are its first verses :
"Lily O'Grady,
Silly and shady,
Longing to be
A lazy lady,
Walked by the cupolas, gables in the
Lake's Georgian stables,
In a fairy tale like the heat intense,
And the mist in the woods when across the fence
The children gathering strawberries
Are changed by the heat into Negresses,
Though their fair hair
Shines there
Like gold-haired planets, Calliope, Io,
Pomona, Antiope, Echo, and Clio. "
The music is fanciful and sounds sowewhat jazzy, or Bernstein-like - far far away from Crown Imperial :-). The organ transcription is by Robert Gower (OUP, in "A Walton organ album"). |