The Realm of Fancy.
“The Realm of Fancy” is a short cantata, the music set to Keats’s familiar poem:—
“Ever let the fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.”
With the exception of a dozen lines, the dainty poem is used entire, and is set to music with a keen appreciation of its graceful beauty. A short allegretto fancifully trips along to the opening chorus (“Ever let the Fancy roam”), which is admirable for its shifting play of musical color. A soprano solo (“She will bring in spite of Frost”), followed by a very expressive barytone solo (“Thou shalt at a Glance behold the Daisy and the Marigold”), leads up to a charming little chorus (“Shaded Hyacinth, always Sapphire Queen”). A short instrumental passage, in the time of the opening allegretto, introduces the final chorus (“O Sweet Fancy, let her loose”), charmingly worked up, and closing in canon form. The cantata is very short; but rarely have poem and music been more happily wedded than in this delightful tribute to fancy.
Phœbus, Arise.
Mr. Paine’s ripe scholarship is shown to admirable advantage in his selection of the poem “Phœbus, Arise” from among the lyrics of the old Scottish poet, William Drummond, of Hawthornden, and the characteristic old-style setting he has given to it. Like “The Realm of Fancy,” it is very short; but like that cantata, also, it illustrates the versatility of his talent and the happy manner in which he preserves the characteristics of the poem in his music. Drummond, who has been called “the Scottish Petrarch,” and whose poems were so celebrated that even Ben Jonson could find it in his way to visit him, was noted for the grace and lightness of his verse, and the pensive cast with which it was tinged. It has little of the modern poetic style, and the composer has clothed his poem in a musical garb to correspond.
The cantata is written for tenor solo, male chorus, and orchestra, and opens with a brilliant chorus (“Phœbus, arise, and paint the sable Skies with azure, white, and red”), closing with a crescendo in the old style. An expressive and somewhat pensive tenor solo follows:—