This is a text I wrote a few weeks ago after listening so many times to the album “A Fairer House Than Prose”. It is not meant as a review in the strict sense of the word. It’s a very personal story that reflects my love for the poet Emily Dickinson; plus I adore the Hark! & Co album. (Also I prefer to consider the twelve pieces of music on this album as songs, rather than soundscapes as I read in some reviews.) The text is unfinished. I feel that more songs deserve some special attention.

Emily and Harke Jan – Dwelling in Possibility

I like good prose; I love the meandering sentences one can get lost in. Its detailed precision and complexity of thinking expressed in long compositions of words. You will tell me that poetry does exactly these same things but with fewer words and a nicer rhythm and sound to them, a freer and boundless imagery. But somehow I find the succinct way of formulation rather difficult to understand at times. I admit I often struggle with poetry although I know I should embrace its possibilities of meaning and expressiveness rather than fight them or break my head over them.

Emily just knew instinctively how to do that. I suppose prose felt like a prison to her. She wanted purity of thought, density and a circuital approach of expression of meaning, oblique or elliptical and freedom of words in a beautiful concoction of ideas. Her thinking and feeling intertwined in remarkable stanzas so concentrated and seraphic … heavenly. Hers was a female spirit of the body and the mind. She united words in mind bending ways; their unison resulted mainly in a startling sense of beauty as never heard before. As a composer who loves adorning the words of poetry with his music, Harke Jan knows all about the tender relationship between the meanings generated by both the syntax of language and the one of music. His musical writing almost seems to be dictated by the poet in a beautifully created balance or interplay between the sounds of both worlds. This “balance” is a gorgeous composure where music and words are capable to show both presence of mind and self-confidence, each one is allowed to do its own thing, finding the other along the way.

A few days ago I woke up with a melody in my head. It sounded both familiar and mysterious. It felt like I heard it a million times before, had known it for the longest time, yet I was unable to find the words that accompanied the melodic lines. I had made up my own words apparently and they didn’t ring a bell. I had no idea where it all came from. This went on for a couple of days until all of a sudden the proper and fair words came to my mind.

Forever is composed of nows.

“Forever is composed of nows” … this simple flow of nows … doesn’t it sound familiar too … like the flow of music? This ethereal, composed line of music is so very beautiful and it suits the words to a tee. It is the second song of “A Fairer House Than Prose”, an album with themes of music like the themes of a poem – dense and feathery – composed by Harke Jan Van Der Meulen. Delicate with voices that embody both music and words, deliciously savouring each moment, celebrating the moment of each word like only the finest desire of music can. The voice that sings us this line is also a familiar one. It is the voice of Nits which adorned many a musical beauty of moments, wandering around the days and years of our lives, Henk Hofstede in his wool voice. The music exhales a simple sense of infinity, yet is so deeply embedded in the here and now. A “Now” of composition with a fresh, dreamlike, universal energy. Bells and guitar defy one another. The joy of the seamless eternity of time in the disguise of the extolling, circling sound of the bells. The purging, obliterating energy of the guitar. The shared voice of Emily and Henk perfectly aligned. “ “Hope is a strange invention”, Emily said”, Henk once sang.

As if the articulation of the words was taken over by the music or … as if Emily herself was directing the music instruments with her hands full of all the possible sensuality of the now of life. Thinking, for her, equalled living more intensely. Words helped her capture the intensity of moments, the feelings, moods, ideas that came over her, trying to catch the mystery of meaning. That sweet but fervent hunt for meaning in every moment is something I like to compare to the succession of notes, their interplay, the intersection with silence, the climbing up and falling down of melodies, the harmony and disharmony of their sounds; music helps you feel and think, opens up and widens the realm of meaning and its emotions. In this way the poetess and the composer, they are a perfect match. Emily and Harke Jan. In their condensed search for the expression of meaning in its broadest possible sense.

In another shivering instance of the power of now – “Now I knew I lost her” -, the magistral voice of JP Den Tex breaks open the moment of the music in the announcement of an end to devotion and idolatry. This for me is certainly one of the highlights of this album: the destruction of an ideal, the loss of a love, a false worship coming to an end in a voice of pure dramatic energy. A music of reflection, self-knowledge, denunciation. A feeling I can empathise with from my own experience with life’s “false idols”; the voice of JP Den Tex touches me deeply, its beautifully restrained sadness, again this wonderful composure expressing difficult emotions.

Just like Emily’s words, the compositions of Harke Jan on this album carry with them the vivacity of the present moment. The moment of writing of both their hands is what drives the songs in their short observational prowess. The way the light falls in the corner of a room creates meaning, the way a melody unfolds, changes the moment and its meaning. A poet sees everything. Songs have this ability to broaden the meaning of words, that’s one of the reasons that I like songs so much. Their music – if attentively spun around the words – completes the words of the mind in a delicate spirit of now that flows through the body. The sensuality and playfulness of the songs of “A Fairer House Than Prose” suit the passionate, unruly character of the she-figure perfectly, she who thought and felt the words and then wrote them down. That’s what I first felt when I kept on listening to this album: intensity and equivalence in the personal, intimate bond between the worlds of Emily and Harke Jan. Their passion is often like a short sudden outburst of beauty, her poems often short, his music never unnecessary lingering . The end of the short-lived melodies of the songs is always in sight, aligning once more with one of Emily’s obsessions, the one with death, often lurking behind the curtains of her bedroom window. But most often the curtains are wide open and large windows in the music invite the whirling, busy sounds in of a bee, a bird or a fly to offer a suitable companion for Emily who preferred to be close to nature rather than in the company of people, flying little species of nature bringing with them both life and death. The compositions of Harke Jan excel in imaginative flowerings – sometimes like the quixotic spell of movements of little creatures or elements of nature -, in a pure unadulterated intensity of emotion, in sparkling joy – not unlike the humour and laughter seeping through Emily’s words – and an at times intriguing defiance which – just like the poetess’ rebellious brews – result only in a deep feeling of beauty. And always this hope that enters through the open windows of the music.

Against the ephemeral passing of the notes of a song, this music lets in hope in large amounts. A little bird and a sweet song, on “A Fairer House Than Prose” they both are the thing with feathers bringing us hope. The voices are addressing the words to you, carried by the music as butterfly wings that whirl and flutter around you only for a short while. The happy, crystal clear sound of the piano and violin often in a wonderful counterpoint to Emily’s darker words or ideas; and so is the female voice – of an even brighter clarity on this album – in her beauteous contrast offering a “polyphonic” cluster of meanings between words and music. The instruments in Harke Jan Vd Meulen’s compositions always seem in an excellent mood, happy and full of joy, or of an equanimous serenity, committed and determined. And completely in tune with Emily’s poetical character, they show compassion and gentleness in bringing us their truths. For one truth there certainly is: the truth of a festive encounter between poetry and its music, celebrating the beauty of poetry through the ever vivid liveliness of music. You can hear they once belonged together … Music is the art form that knows how to bring everything, how ever remote, back to the here and now. One feels that for both Emily and Harke Jan beauty is the vehicle par excellence to express the endless possibilities and intricacies of meaning. In fact – come to think of it – this music and poetry share what I’d call – using Emily’s words – a “circuital” approach to the expression of beauty and meaning, often oblique or elliptical, difficult to catch, but always a delight!

A splendid accomplishment … especially since “not every Dickinson poem is singable to “Yellow Rose of Texas” “, – a quote from a character of the novel “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace .

Joke Roelandt, November 2025