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Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb is a jubilant song of praise for the beauty and mystery of creation. Its colorful, often eccentric text by Enlightenment-era poet Christopher Smart (1722-71) gave Britten the means to explore wildly different areas of sound, texture, and emotion. Not all commentators, however, have appreciated the unique and idiosyncratic text. Consider, for example, the words of Donald Mitchell:
Britten's penchant for freak poets and experimental poetic design ... may be responsible for the strange choice of Christopher Smart's Rejoice in the Lamb. This poem was written while Smart was an inmate of an asylum, and it is replete with a cloudy and mystical religiosity, sometimes reminiscent of Blake's visionary poetry.1
Although the work certainly is, at times, "cloudy and mystical," it is also alternately exultant, poignant, and anguished. Rejoice in the Lamb represents a fascinating collaboration across time of poet, musician, text, and music-each of which merits closer examination.
A Confession from Bedlam: Christopher Smart
It has been said of the life of writer, poet, and wit Christopher Smart, born in Kent in 1722, that he "spent the first half in climbing up hill, the second in sliding or rolling down."2 Though he spent his young professional life as a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and won several prizes for his religious poetry, by the age of twenty-five, heavy drinking and mounting debt all but ended his promising career. By the year 1756, he began to display signs of mental illness. As described by William Force Stead, "he would fall upon his knees in the street to pour forth his prayers, in spite of the jeers of small boys and the curious glances of the passers-by."3 Smart apparently took very seriously the New Testament mandate to "pray without ceasing." His condition declined rapidly, and in that same year he was confined to an asylum, where he would remain until 1763. It was during this time that, in the company of his cat Jeoffry, the troubled Smart penned his lengthy devotional poem of praise, Jubilate Agno, from which the text of Britten's festival cantata is assembled.
Jubilate Agno: Smart's Expressions of Faith
Though Smart's unorthodix behavior caused him to be institutionalized, his "intensely confessional" and "prophetic"4 poem indicates he has...