"Ever since I was seventeen, when the reading of William Blake was to make a profound difference to my life, I have wanted to set the entire Songs of Innocence and of Experience to music. Several songs were actually completed in 1956; The Sick Rose, and the opening, revised, of the Songs of Innocence, are survivors of that time, and the work remained in my mind until 1973, when I moved to Ann Arbor to teach at the University of Michigan. I felt that I could thus simplify my life enough to be able to realize the cycle I had dreamed of for so long…If any one work of mine has been the chief source and progenitor of the others, I would have to say that this is it. My fascination with the synthesis of the most unlikely stylistic elements dates from my knowledge and application of Blake's principle of contraries, and I have spent most of my artistic life in pursuit of this higher synthesis. In this work, through my settings, I have tried my best to make everything clear; I have used music in the same way Blake used line and colour, in order to illuminate the poems." – William Bolcom, 1984
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Songs of Innocence
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Part 1: Introduction
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Part 1: The Ecchoing Green
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Part 1: The Lamb
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Part 1: The Shepherd
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Part 1: Infant Joy
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Part 1: The Little Black Boy
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Part 2: Laughing Song
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Part 2: Spring
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Part 2: A Cradle Song
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Part 2: Nurse's Song
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Part 2: Holy Thursday
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Part 2: The Blossom
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Part 2: Interlude
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Part 2: The Chimney Sweeper
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Part 2: The Divine Image
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Part 3: Nocturne
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Part 3: Night
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Part 3: A Dream
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Part 3: On Another's Sorrow
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Part 3: The Little Boy Lost
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Part 3: The Little Boy Found
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Part 3: Coda
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Songs of Experience, Volume I
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Part 1: Introduction
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Part 1: Hear the Voice of the Bard
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Part 1: Interlude
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Part 1: Earth's Answer
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Part 2: Nurse's Song
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Part 2: The Fly
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Part 2: The Tyger
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Part 2: The Little Girl Lost
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Part 2: In the Southern Clime
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Part 2: The Little Girl Found
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Part 3: The Clod and the Pebble
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Part 3: The Little Vagabond
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Part 3: Holy Thursday
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Part 3: A Poison Tree
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Part 3: The Angel
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Part 3: The Sick Rose
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Part 3: To Tirzah
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Songs of Experience, Volume II
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Part 4: The Voice of the Ancient Bard
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Part 4: My Pretty Rose Tree
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Part 4: Ah! Sun-Flower
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Part 4: The Lilly
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Part 5: Introduction
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Part 5: The Garden of Love
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Part 5: A Little Boy Lost
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Part 5: A Little Girl Lost
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Part 5: Infant Sorrow
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Part 5: Vocalise
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Part 6: London
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Part 6: The School-Boy
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Part 6: The Chimney Sweeper
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Part 6: The Human Abstract
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Part 6: Interlude - Voces Clamandae
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Part 6: A Divine Image
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How My Heart Sings!
