London Revisited
Haunting these shattered walls, hung with our past
That no electron and no sun can pierce,
We visit rooms in dreams
Where we ourselves are ghosts.
There is no foothold for our solid world,
No hanging Babylon for the certain mind
In rooms tattered by wind, wept on by rain.
Wild as the tomb, wild as the mountainside
A storm of hours has shaken the finespun world
Tearing away our palaces, our faces, and our days.
This extract from London Revisited shows the moment when the voice joins the final bars of the keyboard’s second ‘rising from the depths’ passage that frame a series of declamations by the singer. This music uses the same generative structure as the composer’s Rising, Falling, Hovering for solo piano.