Revenons à nos montagnes

.. with that air of not trying to console

which is its own consolation .. beginning

on a wayward harmony, the music transcended 

mere wistfulness by suggesting to the inner

ear even after the final cadence that it was

still going on endlessly, forever slanted a-

way from resolution. It imprinted its splen-
dour on the landscape of dawn, drawing the
eye up the dark pyramid of its foothills to-
wards the peak from whose glittering snows
the wind drew a plume of ice crystals like
smoke across the pale blue sky. 

Sometimes the mountain was there; often it 

vanished completely for weeks or even months 

as if worn out by having to transcend so in-

imical a climate, so unpromising a place ..

For the companions of this casual
project, who come here because you 
want to and rebound so resiliently:
I admire you. This is the behaviour
of the mountain - not of the sheep. 

James Hamilton-Paterson

Gerontius

1989 Whitbread Prize

Soho Press, 1991©


Robert Schumann
Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6
  Innig
1837
Maurizio Pollini
Deutsche Grammophon, 2001©

Lionel André, Weisshorn