Roads Shining Like River Up Hill After Rain   Ghost Shards for choir and cello

Edward Thomas was killed on 9th April (Easter Monday) 1917 in Arras on the western front when a German shell passed so close to his body that the air was sucked out of his lungs and he died without a mark on him. The contents of his pockets, sent home to his wife, contained his diary, a photograph, and a letter on the back of which were scribbled some fragments of incomplete poetry including the lines: ‘Where any turn may lead to Heaven,  Or any corner may hide Hell,  Roads shining like river up hill after rain.’

The text has been fashioned from fragments of his collected poetry (including the lines found in his pocket) as a metaphorical journey from his home village of Steep to the Western Front. It uses the poem ‘Roads’ as a guiding text throughout and

The text has been arranged by Robert Macfarlane drawing on lines, images and fragments from Thomas's poetry (including the unfinished verse found in his pocket) as a metaphorical journey from his home village of Steep to the Western Front. Each section closes with a stanza from the poem ‘Roads’ which threads through the whole piece. Thomas is the ghost and spirit-guide to Macfarlane's bestselling 2012 book about paths, walking and memory, The Old Ways, and Macfarlane wrote the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Thomas's Selected Poems and Prose. Macfarlane has written extensively about the poet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q1IK-O5Ypg

Described by Ted Hughes as ’the father of us all’, Thomas came late to poetry and it was only through his close friendship with Robert Frost that he finally turned to the form, writing all his work in just a few years before his death in the First World War. He was a regular walker of his surroundings on the South Downs, which are the focus for much of his poetry, and this sense of place, connecting past and present is central to his work. The act of walking helped him to shake off some of the depression and self-doubt which plagued him all his life. 

The solo ‘cello acts as both an embodiment of Thomas himself as well as providing the sense of travelling through a landscape with the rhythmical suggestions of walking. It plots a melodic pathway allowing the text fragments to act as viewpoints or reflections on the journey. Rather like the evolving perspectives of a walk, where one landscape merges into the next in an ever-changing perspective, so the fleeting fragments of the incomplete poetry, like unfinished thoughts, mingle together to form suggestions rather than anything complete.

The piece is also imbued with a flavor of that Edwardian melancholy which pervades Elgar’s Cello Concerto of a few years later, as well as an intimacy, which couples the wonder of nature with a dark yearning. The choice of ‘cello obbligato is party suggested by this, and partly because of the highly personal (and song-like) nature of the instrument.

The creation of this new work has been supported by the Hinrichsen Foundation, to whom I am most grateful.

The premiere took place on Easter Saturday 2017 in New College Chapel, Oxford at 3.15pm. It was premiered by the Oxford Bach Soloists (conducted by Tom Hammond-Davies) who then performed it again at the STartford Literature Festival. The solo 'cellist was Gabriella Swallow. Other performances of the piece then took place throughout 2017 by the Wooburn Singers, Pegasus and Rodolfus choirs.

"The Stratford Literary Festival was delighted to host the Oxford Bath Soloists performing Colin Riley’s piece to mark the centenary of the death of Edward Thomas. We began the event with some of Thomas’ poems and some biography to put the music into context, and the response from the audience to the work was tremendous. Many were deeply moved. It was a pleasure to work on the project.”

Link to blog about the creation of 'Roads Shining Like River Up Hill After Rain'

Full LIbretto Below

Roads Shining Like River Up Hill After Rain

5 ghost shards for choir and cello

Music – Colin Riley

Libretto compiled by Robert Macfarlane

Based on fragments of poetry by Edward Thomas

I. Open your eyes to the air

Open your eyes to the air,                                            

That has washed the eyes of the stars

Through all the dewy night

Will you come?

Over this land freckled with snow.

I would arise and go far

To where the lilies are.

Will you come?

To a new country – the path I had to find.

When the joy of walking thus                            

Has taken us by surprise

Often footsore, never                                                               

Yet of the road I weary,

Though long and steep and dreary

As it winds on for ever.

II. Half a kiss, half a tear

The sun set, the wind fell, the sea                     

Was like a mirror shaking.

I read the sign. Which way shall I go?                

A voice says: You would not have doubted so

At twenty.

We look and understand

We cannot speak

Hark at the rain                                                 

Windless and light,

Half a kiss, half a tear

Saying good-night 

The green roads that end in the forest

Are strewn with white goose feathers this June 

Like marks left behind by someone gone to the forest

To show his track. But he has never come back.

The hill road wet with rain                                  

In the sun would not gleam      

Like a winding stream

If we trod it not again.

III. I have come to the borders of sleep

I have come to the borders of sleep                              

The unfathomable deep

Forest where all must lose

Their way, however straight

Or winding.

The tall forest towers

Its silence I hear and obey

That I may lose my way

And myself.

A light divided the swollen clouds

And lay most perfectly

Like a straight narrow footbridge bright

That crossed over the sea to me           

Now all roads lead to France                             

And heavy is the tread 

Of the living; but the dead

Returning lightly dance

IV. Figures suspended still and ghostly white

Figures, suspended still and ghostly white,                                 

The past hovering as it revisits the light.

The last light has gone out of the world, except

This moonlight lying on the grass like frost

Beyond the brink of the tall elm’s shadow.

It is as if everything else has slept.

The past is a strange land, most strange

The soundless fields and streets of it.

There are so many things I have forgot

That once were much to me, or that were not

The roads are lonely
While we sleep, lonelier
For lack of the traveller
Who is now a dream only.

V. The end fell like a bell

The end fell like a bell                                                               

Soar in lone flight

So far,

Like a black star

A mote 

of singing dust

Afloat

Above

That dreams

The light of the new moon and every star

And no more singing for the bird

I never understood quite what was meant by God

Where any turn may lead to Heaven

Or any corner may hide Hell

Roads shining like river up hill after rain

Roads go on                                                     

While we forget, and are

Forgotten like a star

That shoots and is gone