Author Archives: Verseandmusic.com

About Verseandmusic.com

Michael Craske researches transgressive poetics, music, aesthetics, and perhaps transgressive anything at Queen Mary, University of London (but mainly Swinburne, Wagner, and T. S. Eliot). He was once involved in diplomacy, of a Middle Eastern kind...

Original score for Marzials’s ‘Ask Nothing More’ (1883)

Posted on July 20, 2019

Here is an original score for Theophilus Marzials’s popular song ‘Ask Nothing More’ (1883). The words are from Swinburne’s poem ‘The Oblation’ (Songs Before Sunrise, 1871). I played my own recording of this piece at the British Association of Decadent … Continue reading →

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Chewing Swinburne’s Thistles: Swinburne, Dannreuther, and Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’

Posted on June 10, 2019

I’m glad to say that my short article on Edward Dannreuther (1844-1905) and Swinburne has been published in Notes & Queries. It reveals two hitherto unnoticed references to Wagner by Swinburne in his 1869 essay, ‘Notes on the Text of … Continue reading →

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‘The world, what is it to you, dear’: Mary Wakefield’s Maytime in Midwinter (1885)

Posted on May 16, 2019

On the afternoon of 13 March 1878 at a charity concert at the Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome, Mary Wakefield started to sing. In the audience was Anne Crawford, the Baroness von Rabe, who was amazed by her performance. It had … Continue reading →

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The Journal of Victorian Culture: Swinburne, Wagner, T. S. Eliot, and the musical legacy of ‘Poems and Ballads’

Posted on June 19, 2018

I’m very happy to report that my article, ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads‘, has been published by the Journal of Victorian Culture. The article links to the post below concerning Francis Hueffer, whom the article … Continue reading →

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Roses, pleasure, and pain: ‘A Match’ (1873) by Francis Hueffer

Posted on June 8, 2018

The following post is related to my article ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads’ in the Journal of Victorian Culture. In addition to the piece by Francis Hueffer below, if you want to hear the … Continue reading →

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An Evening with the Gladstones

Posted on April 10, 2018

Last month I attended a hugely successful ‘Sounding the Salon’ event, which recreated an after-dinner concert originally given on Wednesday 12 March 1873 by Mary Gladstone – the daughter of the Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone – at the concert’s … Continue reading →

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Sounding the Salon: ‘An Evening with the Gladstones’

Posted on March 4, 2018

This exciting event is happening on Thursday (8 March, 2018) at the British Academy at Carlton House Terrace. It’s a re-creation, in the original space, of a concert that took place in 1873, the details of which come from the … Continue reading →

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Song, scandal, and a princess: We are not Sure of Sorrow (1898)

Posted on December 3, 2017

When I started this project, I would not have imagined Swinburne’s languid ‘The Garden of Proserpine’ from Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866) ever inspiring popular music, and certainly not the tone of this piece by Charles Paston-Cooper (1867-1941). Weary … Continue reading →

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Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, 2017

Posted on June 22, 2017

Glad to say that along with the other members of the Sounding Victorian consortium, I’m going to be talking about my research and the project at the Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference at the University of Birmingham next week!  

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‘East to West’ by Charles Villiers Stanford (1893)

Posted on March 5, 2017

By far the most complex recreation I’ve attempted, this is a section of a setting by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) of Swinburne’s ‘East to West’. The lyrics were commissioned by Stanford for the ‘Chicago World’s Fair’ or the ‘Chicago Columbian … Continue reading →

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