Cultural Depictions of Dylan Thomas - in Music

In Music

• Igor Stravinsky wrote "In memoriam Dylan Thomas: Dirge canons and song" (1954) for tenor voice, string quartet, and four trombones, based on "Do not go gentle into that good night."

• Bob Dylan's 1963 song When the Ship Comes In contains the phrase, "the chains of the sea", which matches the last line of Thomas's Fern Hill: "I sang in my chains like the sea". Dylan, born as Robert Zimmermann, is believed to have taken his last name from Thomas (see below).

• Under Milk Wood a 1965 album by British pianist Stan Tracey, inspired by Thomas's play, is one of the most celebrated jazz recordings made in the United Kingdom

• In Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 song, A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission), Paul Simon jokingly states, "He's so unhip, that when you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas, Whoever he was."

• The cover of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), designed by English pop artist Peter Blake, includes a photograph of Dylan Thomas.

• Composer David Diamond set I Have Longed to Move Away for voice and piano in 1968.

• In 1981, American composer William Mayer, set the poem "Fern Hill" to music for a trio, soprano, flute and harp.

• John Cale set a number of Thomas's poems to music: There was a saviour, Do not go gentle into that good night, On a Wedding Anniversary and Lie still, sleep becalmed, recording them in his 1989 album Words for the Dying and (except for the first one) in his 1992 solo live album Fragments of a Rainy Season. Notable among these is "Do not go gentle into that good night", which he performed on stage in the concert held in Cardiff in 1999 to celebrate the opening of the Welsh Assembly. He also has a song titled "A Child's Christmas in Wales," the title being an homage to Dylan Thomas's work but with different lyrics and subject.

• The song "Dog's Eyes, Owl Meat & Man Chop" from the album Domino Club (1990) by The Men They Couldn't Hang refers to Dylan Thomas and the area of Wales where he lived.

• Pittsburgh area band The Gathering Field referred to him in a song called "Dylan Thomas Days" on their 1994 self-titled album.

• In 1996, Belgian composer Henri Lazarof, released Encounters with Dylan Thomas, for soprano & chamber ensemble, comprising ten compositions based on the poets work; including "Your Pain Shall be a Music", "In My Craft or Sullen Art" and "Shall gods be said to thump the clouds".

• American vocal group Cantus, performed two poems set to choral works, with music by Kenneth Jennings, on their 2001 album ...Against the Dying of the Light. The two poems are combined under the title "Two Laments on Dylan Thomas".

• In Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' 2002 song "There She Goes, My Beautiful World", Nick Cave sings "Dylan Thomas/he died drunk/in St. Vincent's Hospital"

• Donovan, on his 2004 album Beat Cafe, set to music the poem "Do not go gentle into that good night".

• In December 2011 Stan Tracey, with his son drummer Clark Tracey and saxophonist Simon Allen, premiered his interpretation of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" at the King's Place arts venue in Camden.