On Easter: Music & Poetry

"No African poet to date has so successfully registered the delights of discovering classical music. 'Into easter with Bach' is a thoughtful meditation on the Easter Oratorio, while 'Beethoven and Us' attempts, perhaps rather arbitrarily, to interpret Beethoven's life through his music. It is not Beethoven's mood which the poet discerns, however, but his own, since Mensah attributes to the German composer a fulfilment and a completeness in love he never knew. (...) Though the tone sometimes waxes over-philosophical, the reader is constantly buoyed up by Mensah's description of aural delights as one by one they assault the imagination:

Time for new music and new shapes
New colours of sound from voice to noise:
The one pure note's pirouette,
Its beauty showing through, in light;
The mixed notes, which overlapping,
Yield, for joy and sad reflection,
Wider, steep perspectives of the spirit.
[The Dark Wanderer]

The balance maintained in this description of baroque counterpoint between physical almost dizzying sensation and intellectual interpretation of musical structure is a delicate one, depending on a willingness to let feeling follow its course before the mind intervenes."


[Extract from 'Continuity and adaptation in Ghanaian verse: on the poetry of A.W. Kayper-Mensah' - West African Poetry, A Critical History by Robert Fraser]






[Mozart- Requiem Aeternam]

This Requiem was written for a mysterious patron who commissioned it anonymously. Mozart, by now in failing health, came to see the Requiem as an omen of his own death. He uses the Latin texts of the Roman Catholic mass, opening with this prayer that God will grant us eternal rest - Requiem aeternam. The introduction of a soaring soprano line is short lived and the formal, grave mood, is soon re-established.



[Mozart - Hostias]

The gentle melody of the Hostias - meaning sacrifice - is the last music Mozart composed. Accompanied by an arching orchestral line, the choir offers prayer and praise to God, in the hope that they will pass from death into eternal life. After Mozart's own death, the Requiem was completed by his friend and pupil, Süssmayr.

"No African poet to date has so successfully registered the delights of discovering classical music. 'Into easter with Bach' is a thoughtful meditation on the Easter Oratorio, while 'Beethoven and Us' attempts, perhaps rather arbitrarily, to interpret Beethoven's life through his music. It is not Beethoven's mood which the poet discerns, however, but his own, since Mensah attributes to the German composer a fulfilment and a completeness in love he never knew. (...) Though the tone sometimes waxes over-philosophical, the reader is constantly buoyed up by Mensah's description of aural delights as one by one they assault the imagination:

Time for new music and new shapes
New colours of sound from voice to noise:
The one pure note's pirouette,
Its beauty showing through, in light;
The mixed notes, which overlapping,
Yield, for joy and sad reflection,
Wider, steep perspectives of the spirit.
[The Dark Wanderer]

The balance maintained in this description of baroque counterpoint between physical almost dizzying sensation and intellectual interpretation of musical structure is a delicate one, depending on a willingness to let feeling follow its course before the mind intervenes."


[Extract from 'Continuity and adaptation in Ghanaian verse: on the poetry of A.W. Kayper-Mensah' - West African Poetry, A Critical History by Robert Fraser]






[Mozart- Requiem Aeternam]

This Requiem was written for a mysterious patron who commissioned it anonymously. Mozart, by now in failing health, came to see the Requiem as an omen of his own death. He uses the Latin texts of the Roman Catholic mass, opening with this prayer that God will grant us eternal rest - Requiem aeternam. The introduction of a soaring soprano line is short lived and the formal, grave mood, is soon re-established.



[Mozart - Hostias]

The gentle melody of the Hostias - meaning sacrifice - is the last music Mozart composed. Accompanied by an arching orchestral line, the choir offers prayer and praise to God, in the hope that they will pass from death into eternal life. After Mozart's own death, the Requiem was completed by his friend and pupil, Süssmayr.