This amazing song is by 20th century British composer Gerald Finzi and comes from his song set Earth and Air and Rain, featuring poetry by Thomas Hardy. In this fascinating text, a man approaches the mysterious ‘Clock of the Years’ and asks that time be turned backward so he might be reunited with his wife, who has died. The strange timekeeper replies that he can do so, but that only he can control how far the backward flow of time will go. The man hurriedly agrees, and time begins to move backward to the point where the man’s wife is young and beautiful- and alive. “That’s it! Keep time right here! Let her remain like this forever!” But time keeps moving backward and she grows younger and younger, becoming a child and then a baby …. until she finally winks out of existence altogether, as though she had never been born in the first place. The man realizes he has lost all his memories of her, to which the Clock coldly replies that he was warned of the risk and that he was foolish to try and change what already is. Finzi takes this text and creates extraordinary drama with it. I sang this song for my junior recital at Luther (back in the spring of 1981) and this is that performance – with my classmate Joel Martinson at the piano. I have just given this song to a voice student for the very first time in my teaching career, and in doing so I was powerfully reminded of how thrilling it was to encounter this song for the first time and how exciting and daunting it was to try and perfect my performance of it. I hope Austin enjoys the experience as much as I did, way back when.
