Ask Me No More

Program Notes

Swinburne’s chorus from the verse drama, Atalanta in Calydon, is one of the great poetic odes to springtime. The narrative context is the myth of the Calydonian boar hunt but this chorus is mostly a love song and a tale of sexual pursuit told through the imagery of the hunt and of the coming of spring. It is also a paragon of Romantic excess and wild fancy. The sheer density of the sonic texture, the frank sensuousness, the unapologetic nostalgia all conjure up a scene with a visceral impact that borders on the absurd. It is also, to my ears, absurdly beautiful.

My setting turns to the similarly over-the-top and often mannered spirit of 1970’s progressive rock, of the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick, to name just a couple of examples. Bald theatricality, elaborate structure, stark juxtapositions, irregular and frequently changing meters are all hallmarks of the piece. It is rich in melodic material, but the germ for much of it is present in the music for the iconic first line. And wide-ranging though it may be, one should still be able to detect a classical ABA form, with A generally louder and faster (cue the fuzzbox), and B softer and slower (with doo-wop back-up singers). An alto solo introduces an extended coda which describes an intimate encounter before the chase starts up again, finally fading into the night.

The above audio is a MIDI mock-up

Ask Me No More
Thomas Carew

Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose; 
For in your beauty's orient deep 
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray 
The golden atoms of the day; 
For in pure love heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

Ask me no more whither doth haste 
The nightingale when May is past; 
For in your sweet dividing throat 
She winters and keeps warm her note. 

Ask me no more where those stars 'light 
That downwards fall in dead of night; 
For in your eyes they sit, and there 
Fixed become as in their sphere. 

Ask me no more if east or west 
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies, 
And in your fragrant bosom dies.