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Here's what Corigliano says about Dylan Thomas' poetry and Fern Hill in particular.
“I first encountered Dylan Thomas’ work in 1959, my last undergraduate year at Columbia College. It was a revelation. Both the sound and structures of Thomas’s words were astonishingly musical. Not by accident, either: ‘What the words meant was of secondary importance; what matters was the sound of them…these words were as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments,’ he wrote in his Poetic Manifesto of 1951. I was irresistibly drawn to translate his music into mine.
“One poem captivated me: Fern Hill, about the poet’s ‘young and easy’ summers at his family’s farm of the same name. I wanted to write this work as a gift for my high-school music teacher, Mrs. Bella Tillis, who first encouraged my musical ambitions. She introduced Fern Hill with piano accompanying her (and, once, my) school choir.
“Fern Hill is a blithe poem, yet touched by darkness; time finally holds the poet ‘green and dying,’ but the poem itself, formally just an ABA song extended into a wide arch, sings joyously of youth and its keen perceptions. I set it for mezzo-soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra, aiming to match the forthright lyricism of the text. (The direction ‘with simplicity’ is everywhere in the printed score.)”
— John Corigliano
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