An Irish Airman Foresees his Death

Description

Flying a plane is all about balance: the balance of each wing, of the nose to the tail. Yeats’s famous poem is, fittingly, all about balance: hate is balanced with love; the future with the past; life with death. The idea of balance is central to his musical setting: the melody is symmetrical around a central axis; the reflective mood of the start is matched its return at the end; violence is followed by a meditative calm.