The Road to Norcombe Hill: Hardy’s Musical Evolution

Abstract

Through the pages of The Life Hardy recounts that as an infant he was ‘extraordinarily sensitive to music’, with a ‘sensitiveness to melody… [which] remained with him through life’.¹ Memories of his youth are dominated by evocative descriptions of his ‘adventures with the fiddle’ in the villages neighbouring Bockhampton.² This early musicality is a characteristic upon which most modern critics agree:³ Michael Millgate notes that ‘the sounds of his father’s violin of an evening could move him to dance and weep simultaneously’; Martin Seymour-Smith that ‘as a boy he sought relief in the joy to be found in music’;⁴ and Elna Sherman that Hardy ‘possessed a sensitive ear … was quickly and profoundly moved by the music he heard; [and] as he matured his musical taste became discriminating’.⁵ And maturation did not see a discernible diminishing in his passion, leading Sherman to ask whether ‘music is the greatest unifying factor in his poetry and prose alike?’⁶ A question answered in the affirmative by Carl C. Weber, whose exhaustive bibliography of Hardy’s ‘musical poems’ concludes that ‘throughout his long life music remained one of Hardy’s chief interests’.⁷ This conclusion is echoed by Robert Gittings who notes that ‘the chief draw, as always in his life, was music’.⁸