Try our new music and poetry mindfulness pairings. Below we’ve listed some of the music you’ll hear in the 2024 Festival and paired it with poems that might give you a new way to listen. Each one comes with a “listening tip” but you can listen however you like!
Some top tips:
- If you have a favourite recording of any of these pieces, go ahead and use yours!
- Have the poem recording and music ready to go so you don’t interrupt the flow…
- Our music links are all YouTube videos: make sure before you settle in to pair your poems up that you’ve clicked through any adverts!
- Listen to the poem and immediately listen to the music — try not to do anything in between
- Try coming back to some of these pairings again and again; you never know how your perception of them might change with multiple hearings…
A Moment for Reflection
Listening tip: try this late in the evening after a long day
Crossing the Bar — Alfred Lord Tennyson
Gabriel Fauré — In Paradisum (from Requiem)
Time for Contemplation
Listening tip: find somewhere quiet to sit where you can have a few minutes to yourself
Lost — David Wagoner (sourced from Pádraig Ó Tuama’s In the Shelter)
J.S. Bach — Concerto in G Minor, BWV 1056R: II. Largo (arr. Sax & Harp)
What we still have
Listening tip: you could try this whilst travelling on a train, watching the world flash past the window
Dmitry Shostakovich — String Quartet No. 2 Mvt I (Overture)
Finding Strength
Listening tip: Try listening to this combination whilst walking or climbing a hill — somewhere you can feel the wind on your face, and perhaps have the opportunity to take in a view.
Prayer 1 from Prayers of a Young Poet — Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Mark S. Burrows
J.S. Bach — Partita No. 2, Chaconne
Curiosity
Listening tip: lacking in motivation? Take a few moments out of your day to be curious, and to consider all of the wonderful things that may yet come to be
Symboisis — Em Gray (from the Forward Book of Poetry 2024)
Henri Tomasi — Suite pour Trois Trompettes Mvt I. Havanáise
Music of Nature
This is a much longer one — a whole string quartet — and we haven’t provided links to the music as the best recordings are often in separate movements. Why not find a recording you like on your favourite movement provider and try this…
Spring in Paris — Sara Teasdale
Joseph Haydn — String Quartet in C Major Op 33. No. 3 ‘Bird’: Mvt 1 & 2
Lines Written in Days of Growing Darkness — Mary Oliver
Joseph Haydn — String Quartet in C Major Op 33. No. 3 ‘Bird’: Mvt 3 & 4
Listening tip: next time it rains, pull your best waterproofs on, plug your headphones in and take this with you, maybe around a lake or by a river or canal — let the rain sound infiltrate the music and poetry and embrace the spring