ARTICLE instrumental characteristics and a predilection for lyrical phrases. The ending, when the first violin emerges from a lovely texture of celesta, vibraphone, bells and the higher stringed instruments is a moment of transcendent magic. It also exemplifies the economy of Smirnov’s writing: not a My Blake note was inessential.”3 Our publishers were pleased and de- cided to print both our scores. By Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov1 2 Soon Kathleen Raine (illus. 1) invited all of us for a cup of Dmitri Nikolaevich Smirnov (dmitrismirnov@ tea. The tea party lasted more than three hours, and we had hotmail.co.uk) is a Russian and British composer, born a long and wonderful talk about Blake. I told her about my in Minsk into a family of opera singers and now living two operas based on Blake’s early prophetic poems and in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. He studied at the Moscow asked for advice about what to choose for my next Blake Conservatory 1967–72 and in 1979 was blacklisted as project. With no hesitation she showed me Blake’s illustra- one of “Khrennikov’s Seven” at the Sixth Congress of tions for the Book of Job, which decorated the walls above the Union of Soviet Composers for unapproved partici- her staircase, and said that they would be wonderful sub- pation in some festivals of Soviet music in the West. He jects for a dramatic musical work. As a present she gave me was one of the founders of Russia’s new ACM (Associ- a few of her books about Blake, as well as her own Selected ation for Contemporary Music), established in Moscow Poems and Autobiographies. She also gave us an excellent in 1990. Smirnov has resided in England since 1991 and referral to her friend John Lane, an artist and head of the has taught at Goldsmiths, University of London, since Dartington Hall Trust. She added, “He is crazy about 2003. Many of his works reflect his fascination with the William Blake exactly like we are, and he will definitely help poetry and art of William Blake. He has translated into you.” Russian all the literary works of Blake except the poem Vala, or The Four Zoas, which he is now working on. 3 My first composition written in England was a song cycle: Short Poems, op. 60, setting five lyrical miniatures by Raine, in every line of which I found echoes of Blake: 2 Part 2: In England This little house No smaller than the world 1 NGLAND welcomed us cordially in 1991. Our con- Nor I lonely E cert was a success: my Jacob’s Ladder, a musical depic- Dwelling in all that is. tion of William Blake’s magnificent Jacob’s Dream of almost two hundred years before, came from Moscow to London I completed the work on 10 May and presented a copy of to be played by the London Sinfonietta under the baton of a my manuscript to the poet during our next meeting in her Russian conductor. It seemed to me that Londoners appre- little house in Chelsea. She was delighted and asked me to ciated this. The horn concerto by my wife, Elena, was send her a recording when it was performed. equally well received. After the concert we were invited to the Garrick Club, and together with our small children had 4 At the beginning of June I received a commission from the a joyful dinner until late at night. The next morning we Composers Ensemble to write a piece for soprano and five moved from Kensington’s Tara Hotel; our friends took instruments (two clarinets, viola, cello, and double bass). I great care of us and took turns in kindly offering us tempo- decided that it was a good opportunity to set to music rary shelter. The newspaper reviews were positive: “Its spi- Blake’s “Silent, Silent Night,” which was described by ralling motifs and sun-lit instrumental colours [made] a Thomas Mann in his Doctor Faustus, the story of the ficti- dreamlike counterpart to the visionary William Blake pic- tious composer Adrian Leverkühn: ture which inspired it”; “Inspired by William Blake’s draw- ing of the Biblical story, this beautifully crafted piece is At the time when I [Serenus Zeitblom] moved to Freis- sectional, with contrasted instrumental groupings marking ing, Adrian was busy with the composition of some songs the boundaries. It is also refined, revealing sensitivity for and lieder, German and foreign, or rather, English. In the first place he had gone back to William Blake and set to 1. Also known by the pen names Dmitri N. Smirnov and D. 3. Geoffrey Norris, “Russian Roulette,” Daily Telegraph 20 April 1991; Smirnov-Sadovsky. Stephen Pettitt, “Concert LS/Rozhdestvensky QEH,” Times 20 April 2. Part 1: In Russia appeared in Blake 51.4 (spring 2018). 1991. Vol. 52, no. 1 (summer 2018) Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 1. (above) With Kathleen Raine in November 1991. 2. (below) The beginning of “Silent, Silent Night,” op. 61, no. 1. Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly Vol. 52, no. 1 (summer 2018) music a very strange poem of this favourite author of his. Fallen from Heaven” (1.16), 3. “Let the Day Perish Wherein “Silent, Silent Night,” in four stanzas of three lines each, I Was Born” (3.3), 4. “Then the Lord Answered Job out of the last stanza of which dismayingly enough runs: the Whirlwind” (38.1-2). I decided to limit myself to a solo But an honest joy instrument, the clarinet, using the player as also a narrator; Does itself destroy the player/narrator reads the text, then plays the melodic For a harlot coy. phrases representing the same words, translated into notes These darkly shocking verses the composer had set to by a coding system where each letter corresponds to a cer- very simple harmonies, which in relation to the tone-lan- tain note (illus. 3; for the code turned into music, see illus. guage of the whole had a “falser,” more heart-rent, un- 4). This quite unusual and experimental opus, Four Studies canny effect than the most daring harmonic tensions, and after the Book of Job (Job’s Studies), op. 62, premiered on 25 made one actually experience the common chord growing October 1991 at Ohio State University. It was magnificently monstrous.4 delivered by the clarinetist Bruce Curlette and sounded akin to a strange mysterious ritual, a sort of sermon in music. When I finished this work and reread the episode above I felt as if Mann had been writing this about me and my 6 Meanwhile I received a message from Devon: John Lane in- new composition (illus. 2). After the beautiful performance vited us to Dartington Hall on 8 August to discuss how he of this song by the soprano Mary Wiegold and the en- could help us. This coincided with the second performance semble conducted by John Woolrich on 20 July 1991 at of my “Silent, Silent Night,” which took place at the Dart- the Cheltenham Festival, I added two more songs—“The ington Summer Music Festival. Before our meeting my Tyger” (Songs of Experience) and “To See a World in a family and I walked around the beautiful garden and sud- Grain of Sand” (“Auguries of Innocence,” Pickering Manu- denly found a big stone tablet with a carved, gold-plated in- script)—and entitled the work Three Blake Songs for voice scription (illus. 5): and chamber ensemble, op. 61. Nine years later I created a new version of the cycle, Four Blake Songs for soprano To see a World in a Grain of Sand and string quartet, op. 61a, by adding one more song, “A And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Divine Image” (Songs of Experience), borrowed from my Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand opera Tiriel. And Eternity in an hour. 5 Almost every week my family and I moved from one It made me feel that this place would be hospitable to us. friend’s house to another; we had already changed places in London ten times before Barry Gavin, a TV film director, 7 I told John about our discovery, and he answered that he suggested we stay at his cottage in the village of Cwm in was responsible for this tablet and the inscription. He asked Shropshire, where we happily spent the whole of July. I his secretary to take our children for a long walk, then, after thought about Kathleen Raine’s suggestion that I follow two hours of exciting conversation mainly focused on our Blake’s illustrations for the Book of Job to create some dra- mutual interest in Blake, declared that he had decided to matic musical work. After looking at Blake’s engravings I provide us with a spacious six-room house for one year, be- chose four of them, using the captions above or below each ginning the next April—we had only to cover our gas and of the designs as the texts for narration: 1. “There Was a electricity bills. He drove us to our future house and around Man in the Land of Uz” (Job 1.1-2), 2. “The Fire of God Is all the attractions in the neighborhood. All this seemed miraculous and we felt on top of the world. Later, when we told our friends about this, they exclaimed, “This is Blake 4. Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (1949; smiling on you.” Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1959) 263-64. 3. Four Studies after the Book of Job (Job’s Studies), op.