Completed in 1984, Man Who Has Come Through is a cycle of four songs based on poems by D.H Lawrence, scored for high voice, flute, oboe, cello and piano. The cycle complements Burgess’s other works on Lawrence, including a television documentary The Rage Of D.H. Lawrence and a book-length study Flame Into Being (1985).

This substantial work of 35 minutes’ duration was premiered in Nottingham in 1985 to mark the centenary of Lawrence’s birth, with a later broadcast on BBC Radio Trent.

The poems that Burgess selected to be set are ‘End of Another Home Holiday’, presented here with restless chromatics; ‘Song of a Man Who Has Come Through’, an optimistic ballad given a vigorous tempo; ‘Snake’, rendered mimetically in a long and meandering setting; and ‘Bavarian Gentians’, which fades into nothingness, just as Persephone disappears into the underworld in the poem.

The settings are framed by an optional instrumental piece, titled ‘Prelude and/or Postlude’.

• Share | 
• Print