An explanation of the musical setting

of
William Blake's
“The Chimney Sweeper”

by

Evan Phinney

Music 2211
Dr. E. Wells
April 21, 2008
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The art and poetry of William Blake has been an important part of the English culture ever

since it was first published. (Change Slide) I chose to set “The Chimney Sweeper” from “Songs of

Innocence and of Experience”, which was published in 1794, because it has been the one poem

that I studied in high school that stayed in my mind. In this presentation, I will present information

about Blake, the poem, and my compositional process.

(Change Slide) For those who do not know him or his poetry, William Blake is one of the

most important figures in eighteenth century life and literature. While many of Blake's

contemporaries were commenting on the “elegant furniture and well-proportioned buildings in the

midst of highly cultivated landscapes, a time of moderation and decency in the home,”1 Blake was

commenting on the dirty, distraught and violent side of English life. Blake was born on November

28, 1757 to a wealthy family, his father a hosier. He was sent to a drawing school as a boy, and was

apprenticed to an engraver by the name of James Basire. It is here that he first developed his

fondness for the arts, from visual art to poetry and music. His early life was where he developed

his wild sense of imagination and two-mindedness which would continue to his adulthood.

(Change Slide) Blake's first collection of poetry, Poetical Sketches, included two consecutive poems

1 John Beer, Writers & their Work: William Blake (Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982), 5.
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entitled 'Song' that showed completely opposing examples of village love.2 This ability to see things

from different angles would become extremely important to Blake, especially when writing and

compiling “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”. “When he was four years old, he said later, God

'put his head to the window' and set him screaming”.3:

Blake evidently enjoyed the power of eidetic vision, a condition in which

human perception projects physical images so powerfully that the projector cannot
easily tell the difference between them and images of the natural world. Such a
power is occasionally found among children, but it seldom persists beyond the age
of twelve; in Blake it lasted all his life. In older years he would often sketch visionary
heads 'from the life,' sitting at a table and looking at his subjects as if the were
actually in the room.4

These visions were also plagued by visions of prison, something which is prevalent in his writings.

The gloomy, confined spaces were not just prison cells to Blake, though: (Change Slide) they

consisted of the buildings and even the lives of the people around him.5 These visions and

thoughts would continue to haunt Blake until his death, and many believed that he had gone

insane. “The time when Blake came closest to insanity was in the first decade of the nineteenth

century, when he was most deeply at odds with those around him. Some of his writings produced

then hint at paranoia.”6 Blake's life would continue to be plagued with hardships, including the loss

of his brother, and not having any children with his wife, Catherine Boucher.7 Blake would live his

life primarily as an artist and engraver, while he is now known principally for his writings. His

images of prison would show up time after time, notably in “The Chimney Sweeper.”

(Change Slide) Blake wrote and compiled the poems from “Songs of Innocence and of

Experience” between 1789 and 1794, a period of his life which was plagued by the death of his

2 John Beer, Writers & their Work: William Blake (Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982), 9.
3 John Beer, Writers & their Work: William Blake (Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982), 6.
4 John Beer, Writers & their Work: William Blake (Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982), 7.
5 John Beer, Writers & their Work: William Blake (Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982), 6.
6 John Beer, Writers & their Work: William Blake (Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982), 7.
7 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 9.
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brother, Robert. When Blake decided to compile the works, he was at a loss for how to do so. He

claims, however, that it was an image of his brother, who he nursed for so long before he died, that

gave him the idea to publish his poems involving all of his art forms: engraving, painting and of

course poetry.8 “For the rest of his life William claimed that he could communicate with his

brother's spirit and gain strength from his advice.”9 It is believed that Blake first wrote the poems in

“Innocence”, and after moving to downtown London he wrote the antithetical poems for

“Experience”.10 “The Chimney Sweeper” from “Experience” is one of the most well known works in

Blake's extensive output. “The Tyger” is yet another of his most known works, and also comes

from the same collection.

The poem is told in a question-answer format, with the first three lines being the question,

and the last line of the first stanza combined with the second and third stanzas forming the answer.

An observer happens across a small child, the chimney sweeper, who is crying in the snow. The

observer asks the child why they are there, and the child replies with “The have gone up to the

church to pray.”11,12 The reason, I think, that many people are drawn to “The Chimney Sweeper” is

because if its straightforward nature. The reply from the child is very succinct in the way that he

explains that his parents threw him into the chimney sweeping world, while they live their happy

lives going to church and thinking that they have done their child no harm, while he risks his life

daily. Blake's visions of prison are highlighted in this poem in many ways.

“They clothed me in the clothes of death”13 is the first prison image: Being a chimney

8 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 10.
9 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 10.
10 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 12.
11 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 146, Line 4.
12 This commentary on the church is quite prevalent is Blake's writings, especially in “Songs of Innocence and
Experience”.
13 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 146, Line 7.
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sweeper was one of the most dangerous jobs that anyone could ever have in London, and it was

predominantly filled by children. “The clothes of death” were the clothes that bound the child to

the profession, and would be the ones that he would die in.

The last line of the poem “Who make up a heaven of our misery.”14 is yet another image of

prison. The line can be interpreted in a few ways, one being that heaven is supposed to be a happy

place, one where the is no suffering. The child, however, is blaming his parents, the priest, the

king, and God for creating him and placing him in this “heaven of misery.” Another take on the line

is that the child is being scornful of his parents, the priest, the king and God for being so happy

while he is stuck in the clothes of death.

Death was hardly the term being used to describe music in the early twentieth century.

Music was being completely reborn with the advent of techniques such as Cell theory, Pitch-Class

Set theory and 12-Tone theory. (Change Slide) 12-Tone theory was developed in the beginning of

the twentieth century by the composer Arnold Schoenberg. By creating a system with “twelve

tones which are related only with one another”15, emphasis could not be given to one particular

note over another, as was the case in traditional tonal music. This technique was used extensively

by the Second Viennese School of composers, including Schoenberg, Hanns Eisler, Alban Berg and

Anton Webern and was influential for many16 composers of the twentieth and twenty-first

centuries.

Before a composer can start randomly putting down pitches and organize them into a tone

row, they must first create a matrix of pitches. (Change Slide) To create a proper matrix you have to

start with a tone row which must be a specific ordering of all 12 chromatic pitches (Click 1) and

14 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, comm. and intro. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (London, New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977), 146, Line 12.
15 Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein and trans. Leo Black (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1975), 218.
16 If not all, at some point in their career.
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have no repeated pitches. (Click 2, 3) It must then be stated in its linear aspects: (Click 4) prime

form, (Click 5) retrograde, (Click 6) inversion and (Click 7) retrograde-inversion. These four linear

aspects can then be set upon any of the 12 pitches of the chromatic scale. (Change Slide) These

rows can then be organized into a matrix, which is also the easiest way to figure out the different

linear aspects. There are 12! (12! = 12x11x10x9... x1), or 479,001,600 unique tone rows that can be

constructed.

Composing “The Chimney Sweeper” was my first foray into the 12-Tone world of the

compositional process. I decided to split the poem up into movements by stanza because each one

is loaded with so much information. I also wanted to compose each movement in a different style

to reflect the text.

I chose to do the first movement in quite a disjunctive style, much like the songs of

Webern. I went in a more extreme direction, however, and as a result is the most complex.

(Change Slide) To write it, I used the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical

sequence where the first number of the sequence is 0, the second number is 1, and each

subsequent number is equal to the sum of the previous two numbers. I only used the first six

values in the sequence, 0 1 1 2 3 5. (Click 1) These numbers would be the number of notes per bar,

starting with 0 in the soprano and working forward, and 5 in the bass working backwards. (Change

Slide) I used rows (Click 1)P-0, (Click 2) P-1, (Click 3) P-2 and (Click 4) R-2 for the bass line and )Click

5) R-0, (Click 6) R-1, (Click 7) R-2 and (Click 8) P-2 for the soprano line. (Change Slide) The rhythms

for the two parts are also related, (Click 1) measures 1-6 the parts are flipped on each other, as are

measures 7-12.

(Change Slide) I composed the second movement in a more expressive and lyrical way,

because it is the most dramatic of the stanzas for me. The second stanza is my favourite of the

whole poem, so the bass line is deliberately simple as to not take away from the text. I had

originally put in tremolos where the trills are in the last system, but I felt that the trills would be
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much easier to voice and would be much more effective for building tension. The final ‘cadence’ of

the movement is almost a tierce de Picardy, as the majority of the movement ends up being in a

minor-like mode. I Laid out the bass line first for this movement, and then composed the soprano

line backwards, knowing that I wanted the parts to end in the unison. Rows used for this

movement are (Click 1) RI-E for the bass and (Click 2) R-3, (Click 3) P-3, (Click 4) RI-6 and (Click 5) I-

6 for the soprano lines.

(Change Slide) When I began writing the third movement, I had a bit of writer’s block. I then

felt like composing an opera, but since I had neither the time nor the means at the time, I decided

to compose the third movement in a neo-baroque aria style. (Click 1) This is why I included the

expression “Baroque-ly” at the beginning of the movement. Halfway through, however, I decided I

hated the idea, but I did not want to restart. I was very happy with what I had written so far, so I

changed immediately to the mysterious climbing motive, helping add to the contrast established in

the text. The last line of the poem is the most striking to me and to many readers, so I decided to

write it with the intention that it could be understood by any English-speaking person. Depending

on the relationship of the performers, this line could also have a striking effect on the audience,

which is important. Not only is the music supposed to affect the audience, but the presence of the

performers should as well. (Click 2) Row I-E was used for the bass line, and rows (Click 3) RI-1 and

(Click 4) I-1 for the soprano line.

The movements may seem a bit separate in style, but I chose to associate each movement

with the feeling that I got from each stanza. (Change Slide) One unifying element was the small use

of Sprechstimme, which I decided to use sparingly since it can be a difficult technique to do

properly all the time. Sprechstimme was developed in the early twentieth century, also by

Schoenberg. It is notated in various ways by various composers, but I used the same notation as

Schoenberg: (Click 1, 2, 3) an X through the stem of the note. To perform Sprechstimme, the

performer hits the written pitch, but immediately abandons it by falling or rising in pitch. It is best
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used in combination with other notes, but is equally effective for single notes.

(Change Slide) While researching texts for this presentation, I came across a choral setting

of all the poems from “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” by William Bolcom. I did not know

about this setting when I was composing my piece originally, so it was a pleasant surprise to see

another finished version of the poem. I am also glad I did not hear or see this verison as it would

have altered my compositional process. Bolcom composes primarily in a Cabaret-like style, with

simple, readily available accompaniment. It turns out that Bolcom’s verion and accompanying

recording won four Grammy awards in 2005 for Best Classical Album, Best Choral Performance,

Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Producer for Classical Recording, Tim

Handley.17 I still have yet to hear the Bolcom version of “The Chimney Sweeper”, and I don’t think I

want to. I also would like to set the entirety of “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, so I would

like to completely finish my own version before hearing the other.

(Change Slide) Writing “The Chimney Sweeper” was an eye-opening experience for me,

both in my learning about Blake and experienceing the 12-Tone method of composition for the first

time. I learned more than I ever did in high school when researching Blake and “The Chimney

Sweeper” for this piece. I also found that his works are complex but at the same time easy to

understand, and I hope that I can write music that reflects these qualities. I expect that my

knowledge of the man and his works will continue to grow as I endeavour to set more of his poetry

to music.

17
Bolcom & Morris, “Bolcom and Morris – songs of innocence and of experience,”
http://bolcomandmorris.com/index.php?contentID=1138.
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Bibliography

Beer, John. Writers & their Work: William Blake. Windsor: Profile Books, Ltd., 1982

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Commentary and Introduction by Sir

Geoffrey Keynes. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Bolcom, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience: A Musical Illumination of the Poems of

William Blake for soloists, choruses and orchestra. Edward B. Marks Music Company and

Bolcom Music, 1983.

Bolcom & Morris, “Bolcom and Morris – songs of innocence and of experience,”

http://bolcomandmorris.com/index.php?contentID=1138 (accessed April 16, 2008).

Paley, Morton D.. The Traveller in the Evening: The Last works of William Blake. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003.

Schoenberg, Arnold. Style and Idea. Edited by Leonard Stein and Translated by Leo Black. Berkeley,

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975.