Setting George Herbert's Lyrics: A DVD Supplement

Setting George Herbert’s Lyrics, included in this volume of the George Herbert Journal, centers on the compositional process and interpretational nuances as expressed by contemporary English and American composers working with Herbert’s texts. Presented in a digital, interactive format, the DVD (for computer use only) offers insights into the composers’ selection of lyrics and the challenges they faced in setting the lyrics to music. It also highlights varying interpretations of particular poems. For example, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Easter” and “The Call” (from “Mystical Songs”) are contrasted with compositions by David Ashley White (Selah Music Publishers, 1993) and Barry Ferguson (Another Music: Through the Year with George Herbert, 2007). Additionally, a wide range of composers, including Simon Lole, David Halls, Timothy Krueger, and Jim Scott Orrick, present and discuss their new compositions. These are counterpointed by the inclusion of a digitally reformatted presentation of settings of lyrics from The Temple from the eighteenth through the twentieth century by the Bemerton (England) Choirs in celebration of the 400th Anniversary of Herbert’s birth in 1993. The DVD contains settings of the following poems by Herbert: