Testing For Buzz XXII: William Blake III

Blake’s ubiquity continued unabated as I grew up through the 70s and beyond. In music, there was ELP’s horrendously pomped-up rendition of “Jerusalem”, and a more suitably spectral name-check in Van Morrison’s sublime 1974 album, Veedon Fleece and the moving “You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River.”

However, in the 80s it was Mike Westbrook’s The Westbrook Blake Bright As Fire that stopped me in my tracks. This collection of inspired settings contained the devastating “Price of Experience” declaimed (I think) by Phil Minton.

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.

From more recent times, Andrew Keeling’s “O Ignis Spiritus” from his 2000 album, Quickening The Dead, contains a beautiful setting of Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Performed by the renowned Hilliard Ensemble, this had a profound effect upon me when I first heard it. Here’s a short extract from this eleven minute long track. If this doesn’t beguile your ears then I suggest you may actually be dead.

Given the date today, some might argue that a chorus of "Happy Birthday" would be more appropriate. However, the above piece is to my ears the most perfect marriage of Blake's words and the sense that lies behind them. It makes the goosebumps rise to attention every single time I hear it.