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Yeats to Music
The full sweep of the poems of W. B. Yeats has now found musical form. For the last twenty-two years, Douglas Saum has been "laboring in ecstasy" creating and producing recordings of this material. He has performed these songs at Yeats themed gatherings in San Francisco, Reno, New York, Chestertown NY, Sligo, Dublin (Ohio), Dublin (Ireland), etc. With a cast of twenty to thirty musicians and speakers, Saum offers up nearly three-hundred pieces on nine CD's, all set to his original music.
On September 30, 1996 Douglas Lee Saum prepared for work as usual, shower, shave, daily vitamins, etc. When he looked at his Cuala Press water-colored litho of W. B. Yeats' poem "The Fiddler of Dooney," however, it ceased to be a normal day.
This day he did not just read the words, it was as if the poem sang to him. A clear, distinct melody rang out in his head as he read the first two lines.
"That's unusual," thought Douglas as he realized he was late and must leave. In the car, before he travelled the two miles to school where he taught English, the entire melody for this poem had presented itself. "Cool beans," he thought "but I'll never remember it."
To make the story short, he did remember it. In fact, in the next nine years he got quite used to the poems of W. B. Yeats singing their melodies to him. Not all of the poems, certainly, but about two hundred and seventy of them . . . so far. And so he began to record these songs and is sharing them with the world.
