I want my girl and I want my pay

[sovay]

For some reason I did not know until tonight that W.H. Auden's "Roman Wall Blues" existed. (Thank Cyril Tawney.) Or that it had been set to music by Benjamin Britten in 1937 as part of a radio play called Hadrian's Wall, of which it is the only surviving part of the score. Or that a recent recording had been briefly available for download free of charge in 2013, which is most certainly not the case anymore.

spatch worked internet magic and got it for me. It's quite good and it does suggest that Britten had just heard Porgy and Bess for the first time.

Anyone with a decent tune for Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium," please feel free to chime in now.

Comments

[sovay]

That’s lovely!

Britten is one of my favorite composers, and this was an especially nice thing for me to discover he'd worked on. And I don't hold the Gershwin against him, since Auden had obviously just been re-reading Kipling.

I went to Segedunum on my first free weekend and can remember standing looking out there in rather inadequate clothing (the local shops having all switched to selling delicate spring garments) and having vast amounts of empathy for all those poor Roman soldiers.

I send sympathies for your past shivering self, but that's a wonderful story.

[cyphomandra]

I send sympathies for your past shivering self, but that's a wonderful story.

Thank you! (and I did eventually find one last suitable winter coat in the back corner of a department store)