MusicSpoke | Artist Owned Sheet Music™

About the Score

One of the most well known 19th Century English poets, Lord Alfred Tennyson, was poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during the reign of Queen Victoria, and was buried within the chapels in Westminster Abbey. Although George Lucas made the phrase "Far-Far-Away" famous in his movie Star Wars, Lord Tennyson actually first penned the words in his poem of the same name. Tennyson said of the text, "The words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm for me." This poem sketches visions of nature, and ethereal beauties that one cannot fully possess but only vaguely hears and feel. The poem also exhibits an out-of-reach atmospheric effect reminiscent of bygone years, deep felt sorrow and the realm beyond the death's door. The musical qualities of the poem are not in a regular meter, but rather in a syllabic chant that falls into a natural spoken rhythm. In an effort to capsulate these notions within her composition, Kira Rugen wrote melodies and harmonies that flow with the natural cadence of the strands, but not measured or cyclical. Neither meter nor melody stays consistent, yet there is a sense of an omnipresent atmospheric and harmonic language. The return to the text "Far-Far-Away" symbolizes the vague sense of recalling a joy, a pain, or beauty, but like a dream at first awakening, slipping away and becoming intangible.

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