Intersections: words, music, and Robert Burns

Intersections, it seems to me, is one really good word to describe how words and music come together in song. Writing lyrics, writing songs, is not usually setting poetry to music, or fitting music to poetry, though written poetry and sung word do have much in common. One person who worked across, around, and through those intersections was the Scottish poet and song collector Robert Burns. It’s been two hundred and fifty years since Burns was born, and through the year, Scotland especially is marking his work and his lasting influence with a range of musical, literary, and other sorts of celebrations. Burns understood that the rhythms and emotions of word and those of music, may connect and illuminate each other, and that it’s also possible for them to stand separately.

If you're asking yourself just who is Robert Burns anyway? you’ve very likely heard his songs even if you don’t know his name -- think Auld Lang Syne, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, My Heart’s in the Highlands, Comin’ Through the Rye. The photograph there at the left is a statue of the man in George Square in Glasgow. I happened to be there on Burns night this past January, and it seemed only right to take his picture.

Another sort of intersection occurs when you take songs that are usually sung in clubs and pubs and around the kitchen table and put them in context with an orchestra. That’s a subject I’ve had the chance to think about a bit in print for the folk music magazine Dirty Linen and the classical music magazine Symphony, and I’ll have ideas on that to share here along the music road as well. For the moment, though, here’s a video that brings all these ideas together. Eddi Reader sings one of my favorite Robert Burns songs, John Anderson My Jo, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra




The Muslim poet Rumi was another who understood the intersection of music and words. Here is a conversation about his work, from Speaking of Faith


you may also want to see
eddi reader: peacetime
Music Road: Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
patrick season: far from home

Through the month of April, I’ve been considering the intersections of poetry and music, lyrics and melody, as it is national poetry month in the United States. You may see some of these thoughts here, and here, and here.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.