Froxfield Choir

Charles Wood: Full Fathom Five (1891)

Wood was principally a composer of church music with an interest in Tudor polyphony. He was particularly skilled at setting words to music and in Full Fathom Five he chose a text by Shakespeare from The Tempest, in which Ariel describes a shipwreck. The music throughout evokes the surge and billow of the sea, the horrific wonders of the underwater world where the drowned lie and the repeated ringing of a bell – a death knell and ship’s bell combined. But the lightness of tone reminds us that this is all a cruel joke – the character in question has not really been drowned.

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, - ding-dong bell.