Old Chester-Nuts

Two Songs of G. K. Chesterton

Mezzo-soprano and Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano) 5′

1. Four Clerihews
2. Higher Mathematics

Clerihews are four-line poetic caricatures invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a friend of Chesterton’s, reportedly while bored in a science lesson. The two exchanged clerihews as schoolboys, and Bentley later published three volumes of them. I set four of these to music, evoking their blithe whimsy as well as the wandering imaginations of bored schoolboys.

Higher Mathematics, from Chesterton’s Songs of Education, is a satire on counterintuitive mathematical results. The music adopts the perspective of an aggrieved mathematician desperately trying to fathom irrefutable, paradoxical logic which simply refuses to make sense (perhaps not such a leap of the imagination?).