Elegant Precision
A recital by
Charlotte Rothschild -
heard by
HOWARD SMITH'... consistently reliable ...'
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On this side of the Atlantic (since the late seventeenth century) fairies have cropped up in works of prominent composers and songwriters; for instance Purcell: The Fairy-Queen (Z 629, 1692); Mendelssohn and Benjamin Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream; Schumann: Marchenbilder ('Fairy Tales'), Op 113; Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune; Dvorák: Rusalka; Prokofiev: Cinderella Op 87; Delibes: Coppélia; Mussorgsky: Baba Yaga; Áine Minogue (born 1977, Borrisokane, County Tipperary): Celtic myth and verse; Mike Scott and The Waterboys; and Donovan: The Song of Wandering Aengus.
Scottish author J M Barrie (1860-1937), creator of 'Tinkerbell', traces fairies to infancy, as follows:
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they went skipping about, and that was the beginning of faeries.
They're found in 'The Little Land' of Robert Louis Stevenson and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1933), illustrated by Arthur Rackham.
J R R Tolkein trod more cautiously:
Overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, and have at times thought about them, I have not studied them professionally...
Copyright © 13 January 2013
Howard Smith,
Masterton, New Zealand
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