A Spectre Scene

This song, composed in 2004, sets the composer’s adaptation of five verses from an incomplete poem by William Blake, which is concerned with the male and female aspects of a human personality. These Blake refers to as “spectre” and “emanation” respectively, and in the poem, they enact a drama of pursuit and rejection. In his biography of Blake, Peter Ackroyd describes how the poet maintained that he would commune with his dead brother Robert, who would dictate words to him which he would realise more fully later. By analogy, this piece sets the verses as if Blake’s wife is relating a scene in which fragments of text are heard from afar, and then realised more fully when sung.

A Spectre Scene was written to mark the Wilfrid Mellers’ 90th birthday and was premiered on 18 July 2004 at the Ryedale Festival by Lesley-Jane Rogers soprano and John Turner treble recorder. 

Philip Grange

My Spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.

Her weeping she shall ne’er give over
I sin against her more and more
And never will from sin be free
Till she forgives and comes to me.

A fathomless and boundless deep
There we wander there we weep
On the hungry craving wind
My Spectre follows behind her.

He scents her footsteps in the snow
Wheresoever she dost go
Thro’ the wintry hail and rain
Oh, when will she return again?

Dost she not in Pride and Scorn
Fill with tempests all my morns
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears.

William Blake