MIDSUMMER MEMORIES
JUNE 16TH 2026
Lit and Phil Library, Newcastle on Tyne
‘Music is like a created world that almost exists in flesh and blood. It really does seem to live within me like a language with vocabulary and grammar (including a lot of highly irregular verbs!) ……’ (Michael Jon Smith)
Michael Jon Smith (1941 – 2009) was brought up in Cumbria as an evacuee, and later lived in Gosforth, Newcastle on Tyne. He studied at the Royal Grammar school, Leeds University and the Royal College of Music.
He started as a violinist in the Netherlands where he married, coming back to Scotland to work in the Scottish National Orchestra under Sir Alexander Gibson. After returning with his family to the Netherlands he switched to the viola, becoming lead violist in the North Holland Philharmonic.
All the time, from the age of 17, he was composing for a variety of instruments, including the voice. He particularly enjoyed setting pieces for viola sextet and octet. The first half of the programme will include pieces he composed for violin, piano, voice and string quartet, as well as one of his favourite themes (‘Gliding’) which will accompany a reading from Dorothy’s Wordsworth’s diary.
Every summer Michael would camp in the Lake District, the inspiration for much of his composition. He fell in love with William Wordsworth’s long autobiographical poem ‘The Prelude’ and, in retirement from his career as an orchestral player, turned it into an oratorio, a shortened version of which was performed by Ryton Community Choir under David Murray a week before Michael’s sudden death at the age of 68.
Three years ago, the ‘Voices of Hope’ choir, conducted by Mark Edwards, performed this version again in Newcastle. The second half of the programme will use the orchestral parts of this work as an accompaniment to Wordsworth’s narrative pastoral poem ‘Michael’, and the concert will also feature two songs (solos for ‘Dorothy’ and ‘William’) performed here for the first time before an audience.
Although Smith never found time – apart from playing, composing and living – to promote his work, the Michael Jon Smith Trust the family has set up after his death has tried to remedy this, and we are grateful to all the performers and loyal audience who have helped us over the years in this venture.
- You can find a number of Michael’s scores as well as further details about ‘The Prelude’ on our website https://www.michaeljonsmith.org
- Please also find and share Michael’s music on Spotify/Apple Music/Deezer/Youtube/Tiktok
- There is also a CD which you can buy here for £6.
To be performed in the first half – order to be announced
(All the music performed is composed by Michael Smith
Introduction
Royal Quartet (dedicated to Prince Charles in 1984)
Piacevole – Marzena Pearson (violin) Nick Butters (piano)
(Aria) Thanks to the human heart – Peter Carey (‘William’) Nick Butters (piano)
(Aria) All that love can do – Mary Hitch (‘Dorothy’) Nick Butters (piano)
Walk up Esk Hause – by Dorothy Wordsworth (1871-1855) read by Karen Elliott)
(Song) Ennerdale – Mary Hitch (soprano) Nick Butters (piano)
(String Quartet) Midsummer Memories – Marzena Pearson & Peter Brumby (violin)
Peter Carey (viola) Jean Smith (cello)
Ode to a Young Dog – Nick Butters (piano)
INTERVAL
Karen Eliot and Mike Smith of the People’s Theatre, Newcastle, will read an abridged version of the pastoral narrative poem ‘Michael’ by William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Background music has been chosen from the recording made of Michael Smith’s ‘Prelude’ in 2023.
There have been many interpretations of the poem. It has been seen as a riff on the parable of the prodigal son or on the story of Abraham and Isaac, and more commonly as an elegy for the enclosing of agricultural land and the passing of a traditional rural way of life.
All these things may well have been in Wordsworth’s mind but ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’ were surely there as well and as in so much of his writing, this poem gives ‘Thanks to the human heart by which we live/Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears’.
I would like to think that these feelings were in Michael Smith’s mind also when he set Wordsworth’s poetry to music.
Apologies must be made to the poet for this abridgement. I have tried to preserve the measured walking pace of the original.
TEXTS USED
FROM ‘INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY’ by William Wordsworth (sung by ‘William’)
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
FROM ‘THE PRELUDE’ Book 14 line 209 – 231 by William Wordsworth (sung by ‘Dorothy’)
Here must thou be, O Man!
Power to thyself; no Helper hast thou here;
Here keepest thou in singleness thy state:
No other can divide with thee this work:
No secondary hand can intervene
To fashion this ability; ’tis thine,
The prime and vital principle is thine
In the recesses of thy nature, far
From any reach of outward fellowship,
Else is not thine at all. But joy to him,
Oh, joy to him who here hath sown, hath laid
Here, the foundation of his future years!
For all that friendship, all that love can do,
All that a darling countenance can look
Or dear voice utter, to complete the man,
Perfect him, made imperfect in himself,
All shall be his: and he whose soul hath risen
Up to the height of feeling intellect
Shall want no humbler tenderness; his heart
Be tender as a nursing mother’s heart;
Of female softness shall his life be full,
ENNERDALE by Annie L Armitt
The place is very still and lone,
A wilderness of grass and stone
Save where the sweet lake fills the vale,
And mirrors all the silent scene.
Great mountain masses intervene
Betwixt the world and Ennerdale.
The mountain sheep climb high and far
To crop the grass on fell and scar.
Darkly o’er head the ravens sail –
The silence is as deep as deep as when
The wild deer used to haunt the glen
And drink the stream of Ennerdale.
The magic of the place is this
Its solitude and silentness.
Stream rush on and tempests wail,
But other sounds are few – and deep
The silence is that loves to sleep
In the solitudes of Ennerdale.
(Annie Armitt, and her sisters, Sophia and Mary Louisa, arrived in Ambleside, Cumbria in the 1880s. Mary was a historian and musicologist, Sophia an artist and naturalist, and Annie a novelist, short story writer and poet. All three were deeply concerned with the cultural life of the area, and of women’s rights in particular.
Smith, who loved the English Lake District, chose to set 3 of these verses to music in 1960)
MICHAEL by William Wordsworth
There have been many interpretations of the poem. It has been seen as a riff on the parable of the prodigal son or on the story of Abraham and Isaac, and, more commonly, as an elegy for the enclosing of agricultural land and the passing of a traditional rural way of life.
All these things may well have been in Wordsworth’s mind but ‘thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’ were surely there as well and as in so much of his writing, the poem gives ‘Thanks to the human heart by which we live/Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears’. I would like to think that these feelings were in Michael Smith’s mind also when he set Wordsworth’s poetry to music
Apologies must be made to the poet for this abridgement. I have tried to preserve the measured walking pace of the original, but you will see that this has done some rather eccentric things to the layout.
If from the public way you turn your steps
Up the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Ghyll,
You will suppose that with an upright path
Your feet must struggle.
But, courage! For beside that boisterous brook,
The mountains have all opened out themselves
And made a hidden valley of their own.
No habitation there is seen. But such
As journey thither, find themselves alone
With a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites
That overhead are sailing in the sky –
It is in truth an utter solitude;
Nor should I have made mention of this dell
But for one object which you might pass by –
Might see and notice not. Beside the brook
There is a straggling heap of unhewn stones!
And to that place a story appertains,
Which, though it be ungarnished with events,
Is not unfit, I deem, for the fireside,
Which, though it be ungarnished with events,
Is not unfit, I deem, for the fireside,
Upon the forest-side in Grasmere Vale
There dwelt a shepherd. Michael was his name –
An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. His mind was keen,
Intense and frugal, apt for all affairs –
And in his shepherd’s calling, he was prompt
And watchful more than ordinary men.
Hence he had learned the meaning of all winds,
Of blasts of every tone. And, oftentimes
When others heeded not, he heard the south
Make subterraneous music, like the noise
Of bagpipers on distant highland hills.
The shepherd, at such warning, of his flock
Bethought him – and he to himself would say,
“The winds are now devising work for me!”
And truly at all times the storm that drives
The traveller to a shelter summon’d him
Up to the mountains. He had been alone
Amid the heart of many thousand mists
That came to him and left him on the heights.
So lived he till his eightieth year was past.
And grossly that man errs who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the shepherd’s thoughts.
Fields, where with cheerful spirits he had breathed
The common air, the hills which he so oft
Had climbed with vigorous steps,
Which like a book preserved the memory
Of the dumb animals whom he had saved,
Had fed or sheltered – these fields, these hills, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love –
The pleasure which there is in life itself.– these fields, these hills, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love –
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
He had not passed his days in singleness.
His helpmate was a comely matron – old,
Though younger than himself full twenty years.
The pair had but one inmate in their house –
An only child, who had been born to them
When Michael, telling o’er his years, began
To deem that he was old.
This only son,
With two brave sheepdogs tried in many a storm,
Made all their household.
Down from the ceiling, by the chimney’s edge,
As duly as the light of day grew dim
The housewife hung a lamp.
Their cottage on a plot of rising ground
Stood single, with large prospect, north and south,
High into Easedale, up to Dunmall Raise,
And westward to the village near the lake.
And from this constant light, so regular
And so far seen, the house itself – by all
Who dwelt within the limits of the vale –
Both old and young, was named The Evening StaR
And so far seen, the house itself – by all
Who dwelt within the limits of the vale –
Both old and young, was named The Evening Star.
As soon as Luke – or so the son was named –
Could stand against the mountain blasts,
He with his father daily went.
Thus in his father’s sight the boy grew up:
And now when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
Thus in his father’s sight the boy grew up:
And now when he had reached his eighteenth year,
He was his comfort and his daily hope.
While in this sort the simple household lived
From day to day, to Michael’s ears there came
Distressful tiding. Long before the time
Of which I speak, the shepherd had been bound
In surety for his brother’s son, a man
Of an industrious life, and ample means.
But unforeseen misfortunes suddenly
Had pressed upon him. And old Michael now
Was summoned to discharge the forfeiture –
A grievous penalty, but little less
Than half his substance, a grievous penalty,
But little less than half his substance.
This unlooked-for claim,
At the first hearing, for a moment took
More hope out of his life than he supposed
That any old man ever could have lost.
As soon as he had gathered so much strength
That he could look his trouble in the face,
It seemed that his sole refuge was to sell
A portion of his patrimonial fields.
Such was his first resolve, but then he thought again.
“Isabel,” said he two evenings after he had heard the news,
“I have been toiling more than seventy years –
And in the open sunshine of God’s love
Have we all lived. Yet if these fields of ours
Should pass into a stranger’s hand, I think
That I could not lie quiet in my grave.
Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel.
We have, thou know’st, another kinsman.
He will be our friend in this distress.
He is a prosperous man,
Thriving in trade—and Luke to him shall go,
And with his kinsman’s help – and his own thrift –
He quickly will repair this loss, and then
May come again to us.
This land shall not go from us, and it shall be free.
Luke shall possess it, free as is the wind
That passes over it
This land shall not go from us, and it shall be free.
Luke shall possess it, free as is the wind
That passes over it.
At this the old man paused,
And Isabel sat silent.
There’s Richard Bateman, thought she to herself,
He was a parish boy. At the church door
They made a gathering for him – shillings, pence,
And halfpennies – wherewith the neighbours bought
A basket, which they filled with pedlar’s wares.
And, with this basket on his arm, the lad
Went up to London, found a master there –
Who out of many chose the trusty boy
To go and overlook his merchandise
Beyond the seas, where he grew wondrous rich,
And left estates and monies to the poor –
And at his birth-place built a chapel, floored
With marble, which he sent from foreign lands.
These thoughts, and many others of like sort,
Passed quickly through the mind of Isabel,
And her face brightened.
These thoughts, and many others of like sort,
Passed quickly through the mind of Isabel,
And her face brightened.
The expected letter from their kinsman came,
With kind assurances that he would do
His utmost for the welfare of the boy –
To which requests were added that forthwith
He might be sent to him.
Near the tumultuous brook of Green-head Ghyll,
In that deep valley, Michael had designed
To build a sheepfold. And, before he heard
The tidings of his melancholy loss,
For this same purpose he had gathered up
A heap of stones, which by the streamlet’s edge
Lay thrown together, ready for the work.
With Luke that evening thitherward he walked,
And soon as they had reached the place the old man spake,
,
“This was a work for us; and now, my son,
It is a work for me. But, lay one stone—
Here, lay it for me, Luke, with thine own hands.
Nay, boy, be of good hope. We both may live
To see a better day. At eighty-four
I still am strong and stout. Do thou thy part,
I will do mine —
And hereafter, Luke,
When thou art gone away, should evil men
Be thy companions, think of me, my son,
And of this moment.
Hither turn thy thoughts,
And God will strengthen thee – amid all fear
And all temptation,
Luke, now, fare thee well!
When thou return’st, thou in this place wilt see
A work which is not here. A covenant ‘twill be between us.
But, whatever fate
Befall thee, I shall love thee to the last,
And bear thy memory with me to the grave.
But, whatever fate
Befall thee, I shall love thee to the last,
And bear thy memory with me to the grave.”
The shepherd ended here; and Luke stooped down,
And, as his father had requested,
Laid the first stone of the sheepfold
The shepherd ended here; and Luke stooped down,
And, as his father had requested, laid
The first stone of the sheepfold.
With morrow’s dawn the boy
Began his journey, and when he had reached
The public way, he put on a bold face.
And all the neighbours, as he passed their doors,
Came forth with wishes and with farewell prayers,
That followed him till he was out of sight.
A good report did from their kinsman come,
Of Luke and his well-doing, and the boy
Wrote loving letters, full of wondrous news,
Which, as the housewife phrased it, were throughout
“The prettiest letters that were ever seen.”
Both parents read them with rejoicing hearts.
So, many months passed on – and once again
The shepherd went about his daily work
With confident and cheerful thoughts. And now
Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour
He to that valley took his way, and there
Wrought at the sheepfold.
So, many months passed on – and once again
The shepherd went about his daily work
With confident and cheerful thoughts. And now
Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour
He to that valley took his way, and there
Wrought at the sheepfold.
Meantime Luke began
To slacken in his duty, and at length
He in the dissolute city gave himself
To evil courses. Ignominy and shame
Fell on him, so that he was driven at last
To seek a hiding-place beyond the seas.
There is a comfort in the strength of love –
‘Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would break the heart. Old Michael found it so.
I have conversed with more than one who well
Remember the old man, and what he was
Years after he had heard this heavy news.
His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks
He went, and still looked up upon the sun,
And listened to the wind. And as before
Performed all kinds of labour for his sheep,
And for the land his small inheritance.
And to that hollow dell from time to time
Did he repair, to build the fold of which
His flock had need.
Tis not forgotten yet
The pity which was then in every heart
For the old man, and ’tis believed by all
That many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone.
There, by the sheepfold sometimes was he seen
Sitting alone, with that his faithful dog –
Then old – beside him, lying at his feet.
The length of full seven years from time to time
He at the building of this sheepfold wrought,
And left the work unfinished when he died.
Three years, or little more, did Isabel
Survive her husband. At her death the estate
Was sold, and went into a stranger’s hand.
