I sort of meant to do this last month as I wrapped up my five year serial presentation of Eliot’s Modernist landmark. This will not be a wrap-up of all the discoveries and feeling that living with this poem each April brought forward for me, but instead a single post that allows one to find the whole thing as I presented it over the years. The kinds of music I wrote and performed for this project varies considerably: blues, folk-rock, punk, orchestral instruments, synths, and solo acoustic guitar. I think this fits with Eliot’s design for his poem, which varies its voice and voices throughout too. Listening to all the parts below in one sitting will require a longer period of attention than this project usually asks for, over a hour. Not for you? Feel free to look at other posts and audio pieces here which are usually under 5 minutes in length.

Taking T. S. Eliot off the page and onto the wings of music for five Aprils.

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First, here’s The Burial of the Dead,  the opening section.  If you don’t see a player gadget, this highlighted hyperlink will open a new tab that will have a way to play my performance of this section. April and spring and remembrance falls off into a rather gothic take on the “unreal city.” In-between we get the most popular single sub-section in the entire series, the “Hyacinth Girl.”

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Next, we move on to A Game of Chess,  which opens rather sleepily*  and finishes with the appearance of the project’s guest voice Heidi Randen. A player will appear for some, and otherwise, here’s the hyperlink for those that don’t get one in their reader.

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The poem’s third section, The Fire Sermon,  has some of my favorite performances of the entire series, the ones that I think work the best, and from first to last it’s the one I’m most proud of. Gadget below for some, or this highlighted hyperlink for others.

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The Death by Water  section is by far the shortest, and here it is. By now you know the drill, gadget if your blog reader allows it, or this highlighted hyperlink.

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I have not rolled up the final section, What the Thunder Said  yet because it would be extraordinarily long. In place of the entire performance of the poem’s longest section, here it is in four subparts as first presented this past April. Highlighted hyperlinks of each part precede the player gadget that some will see and some won’t.

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Part 4

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That final, 4th segment, just above differs from every other one in that it’s an earlier LYL Band live performance which is rough, and ready to take on the complex conclusion of The Waste Land  from a hotly-felt cold-reading of the text (complete with some mispronunciations on my part) .

As I occasionally warned readers here, The Waste Land  is not for everyone, though I think it can be enjoyed simply as a wash of contrasting moods and mysterious words without need for “Will this be on the test?” understanding and extractable meaning. None of these pieces have been particularly popular here, but still the effort to complete this has increased my appreciation for Eliot’s achievement. I’d like to thank in particular Dr. Oliver Tearle over at the Interesting Literature blog whose posts helped illuminate various things regarding this poem and the WWI era while I was creating these performances.

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*Conceptually, my idea for the opening of this section, to conflate the mood of Eliot’s poem here with Blonde on Blonde  era Bob Dylan was fine, but my execution of that kind of languor wasn’t as effective as it should be. If I ever was to do a new, improved version of something in this entire performance, that would be the sub-section I’d think most needs it.

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