3. The Gardening Song (5:50) | ||||||||
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Soprano: I was the gardener of Eden And Eve passed by as I was weeding. Madam, I said, an apple a day Will keep old Doctor Death away! It was a terrible mistake; The lady took me for a snake. The wise one never interferes. She knows it always ends in tears. Tenor: I was the gardener of Gethsemane One Sunday morning, it's my memory, A woman saw me and believed That I was one for whom she grieved. She greeted me as risen Lord This time I left without a word Politely failed to set her right, I'm not to blame; my lie was white. Both: We are the gardeners of the planet Earth! We're still at work for all we're worth. We hear you play your rock and pop, We watch you shop until you drop. We see the failing of the crop. One day all this will have to STOP. © 2000 Andrew Hodges |
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The words are the most literary of my lyrics, and the second verse needs some acquaintance with the christian myths.
A 50-second prelude describes the history of the universe from the big bang (a loud chord of C major) to the emergence of consciousness. One feature, which is later recalled in no. 10, is the conjuring up of creation from mathematics, symbolised by the harmonic series from a deep C up to the sixteenth. A more Disney-like element is the comet which wipes out the dinosaurs. This passage and indeed the whole song makes considerable use of purely synthetic sounds. However the second verse has two natural instrument lines as counterpoints to the tenor. One is a cello solo and the other is the oboe playing the tune of J. S. Bach's aria I would beside my Lord be watching, from the St Matthew Passion. This verse is intended quite seriously as a response to Bach's aria, which I have never liked. Although it has a certain appeal as the most homoerotic of the Passion arias, it has a soppy chorus line 'and so our sins shall fall asleep' which makes little sense. My admiration for the tremendous dramatic power of Bach's narrative writing does, however, come out in the later song Horizon. A friend pointed out that the last verse, in its apocalyptic allusion, actually suggests a christian interpetation. However, the ending is intended to provoke comparison between the mythology of christian salvation and the reality of our world environmental instability. (The counterpoint to the tune in the third verse is provided by a load of electronic junk flowing out into space along with the American national anthem.) In the same way, the prelude is the scientific picture of the Creation, not the story of Genesis. The first two verses give a view of the christian Fall and the Redemption through a moral perspective which is not christian, but much closer to the ethics that people in practice apply. It ends not with a big bang but with a big whimper. The next song, purely instrumental, is the Prelude for Max Penrose. © 2000, 2002 Andrew Hodges | ||||
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