Dido's Lament
Cover of H. Purcell
Unreleased
Cover of H. Purcell
Unreleased
| Lyrics: Thy hand, belinda, darkness shades me. On thy bosom let me rest. More I would, but death invades me. Death is now a welcome guest. When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs create No trouble in thy breast. Remember me, but ah! forget my fate. | Notes: from Purcells opera 'Dido & Aeneas'. 'I hope that people who liked him resist the temptation to turn his life and death into some dumb romantic fantasy--he was so much better than that. Not everyone can get up and sing something they take a liking to and make it their own, sing true to their heart and be curious about all different strains of music. Corpus Christi Carol was a completely conceived interpretation. I'd never heard the piece before and when I heard the original I realised what Jeff had done was even more amazing. He'd taken it into his own world. That's something my favorite classical musicians can do, be themselves but use all that expertise to make the music more beautiful. Jeff did that naturally. Only a handful of people are capable of that. I was amazed when he did meltdown. I asked him what he wanted to sing and he said he'd like to do one of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder in the original German! Absolutely fucking fearless. He was convinced he could sing it without rehearsal, just because he liked it. In the end he did a Purcell song, Dido's Lament, which is in danger of sounding incredibly poignant in retrospect: 'Remember me but forget my fate.' But he also sand Boy With the Thorn In His Side because he liked it, and Grace to show something of himself. When he started singing Dido's Lament at the rehearsal, there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here's a guy shuffling up on-stage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of specifically developed voice, and he's just singing, not doing it like a party piece, but doing something with it. My last memory of him was at the little party in the green room afterwards. There were all these people sitting round Jeff who'd never met before - Fretwork, the viol group, a classical pianist and some jazz player --all talking and laughing about music. He'd charmed everybody. I'd much rather remember that than anything.' -- Elvis Costello (MOJO Magazine, August 1997, speaking of Jeff at the Meltdown festival) “I’d hoped to persuade Jeff Buckley to sing the Dowland song, but by the time we spoke on the phone, Jeff had already worked out his contribution to the evening. He told me he wanted to sing one of the Kindertotenlieder by Gustav Mahler. ‘Jeff, man, some of these songs are pretty long, and they are in German. Do you speakGerman?’ ‘No’, he replied. ‘But it’ll be fine.’ I knew that when he was first appearing at Café Sin-e, Jeff had performed all manner of songs, including complex qawwali pieces originally sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, which I assume Jeff learned phonetically, so I didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d be able to memorize the Mahler. In the end, Jeff decided to perform is own song ‘Grace’, Morrisey’s ‘The Boy with a Thorn in His Side,’ Benjamin Britten’s Corpus Christi Carol and, most poignantly, ‘When I Am Laid in Earth’ from Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, in what he proved to be his last appearance in London. I first heard Jeff sing ‘Dido’s Lament’ in the front room of Catherine Edward’s house in Greenwich. Catherine was part of the Composer’s Ensemble, who were to be playing alongside the viol consort Fretwork in the Flow My Tears program. This was the only opportunity for Jeff to rehearse the piece away from the stage. Catherine began to play and Jeff started to create this extraordinary sound. It flew out of his head and up to the ceiling, but the feeling was not of the air but one of the flesh and the blood and the soul. I looked at Catherine, attentive to the score on the music stand, and swear I saw her blush. But then, Jeff didn’t look like anyone’s idea of an opera singer – he was kind of rumpled in his flying jacket, his T-shirt, and his motorcycle boots. I’m sure a lot of people fell in love with him in a glance. His singing was just as rare and beautiful on the final night of the festival as it was that afternoon, but of course it was attended by both the motor drives of intrusive photographs and the curious sighs of his admirers.” -- Elvis Costello (Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink) |
| Known Performances: (showing 1 of Array results) |
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95-07-01 Queen Elizabeth Hall, Meltdown Festival (night), London, , England |