Exploited for the symphony-going public

'Eight freedom songs Merton had written a few years earlier had been set to music by Alexander Peloquin for a young black singer who had subsequently disappeared to Ireland to take part in a successful show. In the end Peloquin used the songs in a symphony for Eileen Farrell, and Merton found himself accused of selling out, of using the sorrows of the black race simply as material to be exploited for the symphony-going public' - from The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton by Michael Mott
* John Jacob Niles' less accident prone setting of Thomas Merton's The Responsory features in my Chance Music homage to Catalonia. Listen to the podcast here.

Chance Music will be broadcast/webcast on Future Radio 107.8 FM at 3.00pm UK time on Sunday Nov 7 with a repeat at 1.00am of the morning Nov 7 to 8 - listen here. A podcast will be available here after the broadcast. Photo of Thomas Merton via alexsothblog. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

Comments

Pliable said…
From a Thomas Merton website I see the singer the song settings were originally intended for was Robert Lawrence Williams -

http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2007/07/making-your-way-freely-in-jungle.html

More details of Alexander Peloquin's Freedom Songs here -

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Q_-MB735l0EC&pg=PA368&lpg=PA368&dq=thomas+merton+alexander++Peloquin&source=bl&ots=KsN3kuWyEX&sig=fV-1UmdJ9mhW54jlMZx3W4OpoZ4&hl=en&ei=Y1nUTPrbEuaR4gaMydD8Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=thomas%20merton%20alexander%20%20Peloquin&f=false
7:25 pm
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