PROGRAM NOTES
PERCY GRAINGER’S KIPLING’S JUNGLE BOOK CYCLE
There are ten short music movements composed by Australian composer Percy Grainger that have matching stories The Jungle Book written by Runyard Kipling. Kipling was an English journalist, novelist, poet and short-story writer born 1865 in India and died 1936 in London. His Jungle Book duology, Kim and the Just So Stories are his more well known works of fiction.
- The Fall of the Stone
- Morning Song in the Jungle
- Night Song in the Jungle
- The Inuit
- The Beaches of Lukannon
- Red Dog
- The Peora Hunt
- Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack
- Tiger! Tiger!
- Mowgli’s Song Against People
Percy Grainger’s setting of the Jungle Book Cycle was composed over nearly 50 years. He was captivated by Kipling’s writings and felt a strong kinship with them. After Grainger played some of his settings for Kipling, the author stated “Till now I’ve had to reply on black and white, but you do the thing for me in colour.” For this cycle, Grainger selected the poem which resonated with the tragic elements of life. Grainger considered his “Jungle Book” setting the most characteristic and significant amongst his compositional output. As he subsequently explained:
“I developed my mature harmonic style—that is to say, harmony in unresolved discords … such a procedure was unknown at that time and must be considered an Australian contribution to musical progress. So through that parcel of books my father sent me, I became what I have remained ever since, a composer whose musical output was based on patriotism and racial consciousness.”
Below are the stories and poems associated with each movement.
- The Fall of the Stone
The first movement of Percy Grainger’s Kipling’s Jungle Book cycle, “The Fall of the Stone,” is not based on a poem from The Jungle Book. Instead, the verse comes from the beginning of Kipling’s short story “To Be Filed for Reference,” which is in the collection Plain Tales from the Hills.
The text of the verse, attributed to “the unpublished papers of McIntosh Jallaludin,” reads as follows:
“The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.”
Grainger used this short, two-line poem as the basis for the first musical setting in the cycle. The composer created his own title for the movement.
2. Morning Song in the Jungle
(sung by the wolves inside the tale) from the Kipling story “Letting in the Jungle”.
One moment past our bodies cast
No shadow on the plain;
Now clear and black they stride our track,
And we run home again.
In morning-hush, each rock and bush
Stands hard, and high, and raw:
Then give the Call: “Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!”
Now horn and pelt our peoples melt
In covert to abide;
Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill
Our Jungle Barons glide.
Now, stark and plain, Man’s oxen strain,
That draw the new-yoked plough;
Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red
Above the lit talao.
Ho! Get to lair! The sun’s aflare
Behind the breathing grass:
And creaking through the young bamboo
The warning whispers pass.
By day made strange, the woods we range
With blinking eyes we scan;
While down the skies the wild duck cries:
“The Day—the Day to Man!”
The dew is dried that drenched our hide,
Or washed about our way;
And where we drank, the puddled bank
Is crisping into clay.
The traitor Dark gives up each mark
Of stretched or hooded claw:
Then hear the Call: “Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!”
3. Night Song In The Jungle
From the 1st chapter of Kipling’s Jungle Book introduces the jungle’s law.
Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free—
The herds are shut in byre and hut,
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call!—Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
4. The Inuit
The story
An Inuit tribe, living on the far northern ice, are in danger of starvation during a hard winter. The people believe they are doomed. Kotuko, the son of the Headman, has a dog named after him that becomes the lead dog of his sleigh team. Kotuko the dog, followed by another, goes mad with cold and hunger, and runs away. Kotuko the boy believes that a spirit is speaking to him, promising to guide him to find the seal, and – with a girl companion – he sets off into the icy darkness. They see what they think is ‘Quiquern’, an eight-legged spirit, and follow it to solid ground when the ice begins to break. They find that the spirit is really the two dogs, bound together by their harness, but now well fed, since they have found the seal. They load their sled with carcasses and make haste back to the tribe, who are near death, but still surviving. Everyone feeds and rejoices.
5. The Beaches of Lukannon
“Lukannon” by Rudyard Kipling is a poignant lamentation that vividly portrays the plight of the seals and their habitat, the Beaches of Lukannon, in the face of human exploitation.
I meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.
Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;
Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,
And still we sing Lukannon — before the sealers came.
6. The Red Dog
“Red Dog” is a Mowgli story by Rudyard Kipling.
Story
Mowgli the feral child is about 16 years old and living contentedly with his wolves in the Seeonee jungle, when the peace is disturbed by ‘Won-tolla’, a solitary wolf whose mate and cubs have been killed by dholes. He warns the Seeonee wolves that the dhole-pack will soon overrun their territory. Later that night, Mowgli meets Kaa, the huge old python, and tells him the news. Kaa does not believe that Mowgli and the pack will survive a direct attack by the dholes, and enters a trance to search his century-long memory for an effective strategy. When he awakens, Kaa takes Mowgli to the Bee Rocks: a gorge where huge hives produced by millions of wild giant honey bees overhang the river, and Mowgli and Kaa devise a plan to lure the dholes to the gorge so that the bees will attack them.
7. The Peora Hunt
Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide,
By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried;
Log in the plume-grass, hidden and lone;
Dam where the earth-rat’s mounds are strown;
Cave in the bank where the sly stream steals;
Aloe that stabs at the belly and heels,
Jump if you dare on a steed untried—
Safer it is to go wide—go wide!
Hark, from in front where the best men ride:—
‘Pull to the off; boys! Wide! Go wide!’
(The Peora Hunt)
8. Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled—
Once, twice and again!
And a doe leaped up, and a doe leaped up
From the pond in the wood where the wild deer sup.
This I, scouting alone, beheld,
Once, twice and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Sambhur belled—
Once, twice and again!
And a wolf stole back, and a wolf stole back
To carry the word to the waiting pack,
And we sought and we found and we bayed on his track
Once, twice and again!
As the dawn was breaking the Wolf Pack yelled
Once, twice and again!
Feet in the jungle that leave no mark!
Eyes that can see in the dark—the dark!
Tongue—give tongue to it! Hark! O Hark!
Once, twice and again!
9. Tiger! Tiger!
What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the Jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair—to die!
10. Mowgli’s Song Against People
I will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines–
I will call in the Jungle to stamp out your lines!
The roofs shall fade before it,
The house-beams shall fall;
And the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall cover it all!
In the gates of these your councils my people shall sing.
In the doors of these your garners the Bat-folk shall cling;
And the snake shall be your watchman,
By a hearthstone unswept;
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall fruit where ye slept!