In the days leading up to our concert, Together We Sing, the author of our programme notes provides an alternative look at the pieces featured on Saturday 6th June. The series may be interspersed with other posts but will be more or less daily! We hope you enjoy it.
Choose Something Like a Metaphor
What is it about stars?
It took only fourteen verses for them to make their first appearance of Genesis (and another two verses to be identified as such) since when they have been used across the world as symbols and metaphors, have been associated with guidance and prophecy and even been objects of worship.
They have also been part of our everyday lives and language: our starry-eyed selves sing Twinkle-twinkle, Little Star to children, We Reach for the Stars (even if S Club 7 only made it to No. 2 in the Charts), we have Stars in Our Eyes and Our destiny lies in the stars. There are star-crossed lovers, starry-starry nights and although We are all in the gutter … some of us are looking at the stars.
Robert Frost was fascinated by stars and wrote a number of poems using them as metaphors including, The Star-Splitter, The Star, Aestrometaphysical and Choose Something like a Star. The last is the final piece of Randall Thompson’s, Frostiana: Seven Country Songs, commissioned in 1959 by the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, to celebrate its bicentennial, the town, incidentally, where Emily Dickinson was born and raised.
In Choose Something like a Star (echoing Keat’s Bright Star! would I were stedfast as thou art), Frost begins by addressing the star directly – O Star (the fairest one in sight), we grant your loftiness the right to some obscurity of cloud – but by the end is looking for something constant and high-minded to look up to when human affairs become chaotic or overwhelming: So when at times the mob is swayed to carry praise or blame too far, we may choose something like a star to stay our minds on and be staid. Not a star, but something like a star.
Now, talking about the state of British government …
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