The Silver Penny

Here's a strange and deadly little poem by Walter de la Mare that I recently set to music and performed. De la Mare was writing a literary ballad, but in this one he compresses the story's length considerably compared the double-digit stanza numbers of many a broadside or folk ballad telling a similar story. The Parlando Project takes various words (mostly literary poetry) and combines them with original music in differing styles. We've done over 900 of these combinations, and you can hear any of them and read about our encounters with the words at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org