Cautionary Tales for Children

Program Note:

Festival audiences have been fortunate to enjoy several world premieres in recent years by Zachary Wadsworth, a young American composer who first appeared in Staunton in 2011. And while he works in many different genres, Wadsworth seems to have an innate ability to select engaging poetry and set it to evocative music. Upon commission, he has written four new songs based on the “silly little poems” (his words) by poet Hilaire Belloc. (Listeners may recall Wadsworth’s 2013 Cautionary Tales for Children based on Belloc.) Essentially, these are short, funny songs with a slight ironic undertone about our destructive relationship with nature. “The Whale,” a politically-incorrect little number, ponders the practical uses for a slain whale. “The Hippopotamus,” similarly brutish, discusses the best practices for hunting these now-threatened species. After all this violence, we ponder the consequences of our actions in “The Dodo,” a quiet meditation on extinction. Finally, we realize who the real animals are in “The Marmozet.”

The Whale
The Whale that wanders round the Pole
Is not a table fish.
You cannot bake or boil him whole
Nor serve him in a dish;
But you may cut his blubber up
And melt it down for oil.
And so replace the colza bean
(A product of the soil).
These facts should all be noted down
And ruminated on,
By every boy in Oxford town
Who wants to be a Don.

The Hippopotamus
I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten 'em.

The Dodo
The Dodo used to walk around,
And take the sun and air.
The sun yet warms his native ground—
The Dodo is not there!
The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now forever dumb—
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.

The Marmozet
The species Man and Marmozet
Are intimately linked;
The Marmozet survives as yet,
But Men are all extinct.

(c) Jason Stell