Songs of Innocence and of Experience

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This article is about William Blake's poems. For the David Axelrod album, see Song of Innocence.
Blake's frontispiece for Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was first published by itself in 1789, it is believed that Songs of Experience has always been published in conjunction with Innocence since its completion in 1794.

Songs of Innocence mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship with God, and most famously including Blake's poem The Lamb. Its poems have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written from the perspective of children or written about them.

Directly contrasting this, Songs of Experience instead deals with the loss of innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin during adult life, including works such as The Tyger. Poems here are darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes. Throughout both books, many poems fall into pairs, so that a similar situation or theme can be seen in both Innocence and Experience.

Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience with opposing perspectives of the world. This has been understood to be a result of Blake losing faith in the goodness of mankind at the chaotic end of the French Revolution. This analysis seeks to explain much of the volume's sense of despair. Blake gave signs through his work that demonstrate his belief that children lose their innocence through exploitation, education, and religion, all of which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, seem to believe that children should be kept from gaining experience. His poems reflect his belief that every child should be free to gain experience through their own discoveries, unfettered by the dictums of previous generations. In this work as in later works, Blake demonstrates his belief that innocence and experience were "the two contrary states of the human soul", and that innocence is complemented, not lessened, by experience.

Contents

[edit] Songs of Innocence

Songs of Innocence was originally a complete work first printed in 1789. It is a conceptual collection of 19 poems, engraved with artwork.

The poems are each listed below:

Introduction
The Shepherd
The Ecchoing Green
The Lamb
The Little Black Boy
The Blossom
The Chimney Sweeper
The Little Boy lost
The Little Boy found
Laughing Song
A Cradle Song
The Divine Image
Holy Thursday
Night
Spring
Nurse's Song
Infant Joy
A Dream
On Another's Sorrow

[edit] Songs of Experience

Blake's title plate (No.29) for Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience is a 1794 poetry collection of 26 poems forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Some of the poems, such as The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found were moved by Blake to Songs of Innocence, and were frequently moved between the two books.

In this collection of poems, Blake contrasts Songs of Innocence, in which he shows how the human spirit blossoms when allowed its own free movement with Songs of Experience, in which he shows how the human spirit withers after it has been suppressed and forced to conform to rules, and doctrines. In fact, Blake was an English Dissenter and actively opposed the doctrines of the Anglican Church, which tells its members to suppress their feelings. Blake showed how he believed this was wrong through his poems in Songs of Experience.

The most notable of the poems in Songs of Experience are: "The Tyger"," "Ah, Sunflower," "A Poison Tree" and "London". Although these poems today are enjoyed and appreciated, in Blake's time, they were not appreciated at all. Blake lived this whole life in poverty and in heavy debt. Songs of Experience only sold 20 copies before his death in 1827. It is now used in the school GCSE and A-level curriculum.

Introduction (Experience)
Earth's Answer
My Pretty Rose Tree
A Poison Tree
The Tyger
The Sick Rose
Infant Sorrow
The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)
Holy Thursday (Experience)
London
Ah! Sunflower
The Fly
The Clod and the Pebble
The Garden of Love
The Voice of the Ancient Bard
A Divine Image

[edit] Musical settings

Poems from both books have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. Individual poems have also been set by, among others, John Tavener, Jah Wobble, Tangerine Dream. A modified version of the poem "The Little Black Boy" was set to music in the song "My Mother Bore Me" from Maury Yeston's musical Phantom. Folk musician Greg Brown recorded sixteen of the poems on his 1987 album Songs of Innocence and of Experience[1] and by Finn Coren in his Blake Project.

Poet Allen Ginsberg believed the poems were originally intended to be sung, and that through study of the rhyme and meter of the works, a Blakean performance could be approximately replicated. In 1969, he conceived, arranged, directed, sang on, and played piano and harmonium for an album of songs entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg (1970).[2]

The composer William Bolcom completed a setting of the entire collection of poems in 1984. In 2005, a recording of Bolcom's work by the University of Michigan on the Naxos label won 3 Grammy Awards: Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Classical Album. [3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ginsberg-Blake.php
  3. ^ http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/Winners/Results.aspx

[edit] External links

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