Trackway of Time

Trackway of Time is a setting of ‘The Clock-Winder’, a wonderful poem by Thomas Hardy, in which an old parish-clerk climbs the church tower every night to wind the clock: ‘Nightly thus does he climb/To the trackway of time.’ When asked why he continues to do this, he explains: ‘So I wipe out one more … of the sore/Sad days …’ that separate him from an unknown beloved. The physical (climbing), mechanical (clock), and emotional (loss) are brought together in this poem in a most extraordinary way, and that was its appeal in wanting to find a musical response to the words. John Casken