Filmpoem 49 / A Robert Burns Quartet

Filmpoem director Alastair Cook invited Liz Lochhead, the National Poet of Scotland until 2016, to choose four of Robert Burns poems and together with Italian composer Luca Nasciuti they have created beautiful interpretations of four of Burns’s most loved works: 

Ode to Spring

I Murder Hate

Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation

A Man’s a Man for a’ That.

If you know Ode to Spring, you will know it’s not for the faint hearted and so comes with a NSFW warning. Don’t play this in class. 

Pauline Mackay notes “Burns sent ‘Ode to Spring’ to George Thomson, the editor of A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs (1793-1818), in January 1795. Burns claimed that he was challenged by an acquaintance to produce an entirely original ‘Ode to Spring’ and responded with this bawdy, mock pastoral verse. Burns frequently sent bawdy verses to Thomson knowing that they would shock his somewhat prudent editor. However from his correspondence, Thomson received such verses in relatively good humour. ‘Ode to Spring’ also appeared in The Merry Muses (1799) under the alternative title ‘The Summer Morn’.”