On this Bleak Hut

This setting of Edward Thomas’s poem Rain begins with a substantial prelude in which the flute and clarinet build an increasingly dense texture over a sustained cello cantus. This is followed by three vocal sections, each separated by an instrumental interlude that refers back to the prelude. The whole work, which plays without a break, ends with a short violent coda.

Edward Thomas wrote Rain in an army hut in 1916 prior to his embarkation for France, where he was killed at the Battle of Arras the following year. Many of the images used in the poem could be interpreted as metaphors for the horrors of the western front, and the increasing violence of the music is designed partly to reflect such an understanding of the text.

On this Bleak Hut was commissioned by MacNaughten Concerts and premiered on 5 January 1982 at St John’s, Smith Square, London by Capricorn with Ian Partridge tenor.

Philip Grange

Rain, midnight, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain.
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead.
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, [so this]* tempest tells me, disappoint.

Edward Thomas

*This is an alteration of the original.