Lycidas Music Workshop April 6, 2018

Lycidas Workshop Overview

The poem “Lycidas” was written in 1637 as part of a collection of elegies compiled to honor the death of Edward King, a poet and Cambridge fellow who was an associate of Milton. The young King unexpectedly drowned in a shipwreck on the Irish seas.

Robert Balaguer’s adaptation breaks up the singular monody into a series of six scenes that are brought to life by five voices with distinct characters and roles. The story is told from the mind of The Swain and the additional voices spring from his ruminatings over Lycidas’s artistic life, tragic death and their ultimate meaning.