At Middle-Field Gate in February

 

 

 

Poet: Thomas Hardy

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Poem

At Middle-Field Gate in February
 
1 The bars are thick with drops that show  
2 As they gather themselves from the fog  
3 Life silver buttons ranged in a row,  
4 And as evenly spaced as if measured, although  
5 They fall at the feeblest jog.  
 
6 They load the leafless hedge hard by,  
7 And the blades of last year's grass,  
8 While the fallow phoughland turned up nigh  
9 In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie -  
10 Too clogging for feet to pass.  
 
11 How dry it was on a far-back day  
12 When straws hung the hedge and around,  
13 When amid the sheaves in amorous play  
14 In curtained bonnets and light array  
15 Bloomed a bevy now underground!  
 
(Hardy, 480)

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✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦

Musical Analysis

Composition date:

Publication date:

Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes - Distributed by Hal Leonard Corporation

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✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦

 

✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦✼✦

 

Pitch Analysis
  pitch
stanza 1
stanza 2
stanza 3
stanza 4
total
highest
A
G
F
E
D
middle C
B
A
G
F
lowest
E

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Interval Analysis of Vocal Line
interval
direction
stanza 1
stanza 2
stanza 3
stanza 4
total
occurrences
minor 3rd
up
minor 3rd
down
major 3rd
up
major 3rd
down
perfect 4th
up
perfect 4th
down
perfect 5th
up
perfect 5th
down
minor 6th
up
minor 6th
down
major 6th
up
major 6th
down
minor 7th
up
minor 7th
down
octave
up
octave
down
total
up
total
down
grand
total

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Rhythm Duration Analysis of Vocal Line
  stanza 1 stanza 2 stanza 3 stanza 4 total
16th note
8th note
dotted 8th
quarter note
dotted quarter
triplet
half note
dotted half
 
stanza total

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Audio Recordings

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The Songs of Gerald Finzi to Words by Thomas Hardy
The Songs of Gerald Finzi to Words by Thomas Hardy
  • Works: Disc I: Finzi's Earth and Air and Rain, Till Earth Outwears, I Said To Love; Disc II: A Young Man's Exhortation, and Before and After Summer.
  • Recorded: December 1984; rereleased Aug. 2009
  • Hyperion CDA66161/2 MCPS.
  • Playing time: 116 minutes and 34 seconds

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Gerald Finzi
  • Works: Disc 1: Finzi's Before & After Summer, Till Earth Outwears, I Said to Love; Disc 2: Finzi's A Young Man's Exhortation, and Earth and Air and Rain.
  • Recorded: Disc 1: December 1967; Disc 2: April 1970; Rereleased in 2007
  • Lyrita SRCD.282.
  • Playing time: 1 hour and 59 minutes total; Disc I: 62 minutes and 41 seconds; Disc II: 56 minutes and 30 seconds.

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The English Song Series - 12
I said to Love album cover
  • Works: Finzi's I Said to Love, Let Us Garlands Bring, and Before and After Summer. Please click on album image to view complete listing.
  • Recorded: Aug. 2004; released: May 2005
  • Record Label: Naxos 8.557644
  • Playing time: 61 minutes 19 seconds

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Unpublished Analysis Excerpts


 

The following is an analysis of **** by Gerhardus Daniël Van der Watt. Dr. Van der Watt extended permission to post this excerpt from his dissertation on October 8th, 2010. His dissertation dated November 1996, is entitled:

 

The Songs of Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) To Poems by Thomas Hardy

 

This excerpt comes from Volume II and begins on page *** and concludes on page ***. To view the methodology used within Dr. Van der Watt's dissertation please refer to: Methodology - Van der Watt.

1. Poet

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2. Poem

CONTENT/MEANING

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Setting

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Interval
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4. Dynamics

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5. Texture

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6. Structure

7. Mood and atmosphere

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The following is an analysis of At Middle-Field Gate in February by Curtis Alan Scheib. Dr. Scheib extended permission to post this excerpt from his dissertation on February 17th, 2012. His dissertation dated 1999, is entitled:

Gerald Finzi's Songs For Baritone On Texts By Thomas Hardy: An Historical And Literary Analysis And Its Effect On Their Interpretation

This excerpt begins on page seventy-one and concludes on page seventy-three.

At Middle-Field Gate in February
 
  The bars are thick with drops that show  
  As they gather themselves from the fog  
  Life silver buttons ranged in a row,  
  And as evenly spaced as if measured, although  
  They fall at the feeblest jog.  
 
  They load the leafless hedge hard by,  
  And the blades of last year's grass,  
  While the fallow phoughland turned up nigh  
  In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie -  
  Too clogging for feet to pass.  
 
  How dry it was on a far-back day  
  When straws hung the hedge and around,  
  When amid the sheaves in amorous play  
  In curtained bonnets and light array  
  Bloomed a bevy now underground!  
 
(Hardy, 480)

The poet paints a bleak picture of February, contrasting it with the dry warmth of an earlier time before his love, then blooming, descended to her grave. Finzi completed the song in 1956, though apparently he had begun to work on it many years earlier and had left it unfinished. Joy Finzi noted in her journal entry of 21 February 1956 that he had intended it to be for tenor, but in the final writing of it, the song turned, "in the final making, into an inevitable baritone." (Banfield, 299) Finzi begins with an ostinato figure, seen in example 38, whose shape and harmony are meant to convey the bleakness of the scene.

Example 38 p. 72

Finzi continues the pictorial effect at the fall of the droplets off the gate by using an irregular falling figure in the right hand of the piano, falling off the level of the ostinato (example 39).

Example 39 p. 72

The second verse resumes the ostinato, this time up a half-step as the bleakness of the scene intensifies. The third line in the second verse of the poem contains a revision by Hardy from his original. Finzi set both lines, giving the original as an alternate. A note in the score indicates that Finzi preferred Hardy's revision, in spite of the grammatical slip of leaving the original verb "lie" to agree with the new noun "plounghland." The third verse leaves the cold ostinato, both voice and piano finding a lower and warmer tessitura for the remembrance of the "far-back day." As usual, the piano has the last word, repeating the falling figure from the opening of the third verse, this time reinforcing that the lost love is underground.

The preceding was an analysis of At Middle-Field Gate in February by Curtis Alan Scheib. Dr. Scheib extended permission to post this excerpt from his dissertation on February 17th, 2012. His dissertation dated 1999, is entitled:

Gerald Finzi's Songs For Baritone On Texts By Thomas Hardy: An Historical And Literary Analysis And Its Effect On Their Interpretation

The excerpt began on page seventy-one and concluded on page seventy-three.

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Stephen Banfield, Sensibility and English Song: 
Critical Studies of the Early 20th Century

(Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1985), 299.
Thomas Hardy, The Complete Poems of
Thomas Hardy
, Edited by James Gibson
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1976), 480.
Thomas Hardy, The Complete Poems of
Thomas Hardy
, Edited by James Gibson
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1976), 480.