In Search Of The Lost Chord

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The Moody Blues

The sound I've heard in your hello, darlin' you're all I'll ever see
-The Actor (Justin Hayward)

In Search of the Lost Chord, released in 1968, was
The Moody Blues' third album. It has twelve tracks, with a total running time of 42:07. The album was published by Deram Records.
The Moodies made use of approximately 33 instruments during the making of In Search of the Lost Chord. Indian instruments such as the sitar (played by guitarist Justin Hayward) and the tamboura (played by Pinder) made audio appearances of several tracks (notably "Departure," "Visions of Paradise," and "Om"). Other unconventional (for the Moody Blues) instruments were also used, notably the oboe (played by percussionist/flute player Ray Thomas) and the cello (played by bassist John Lodge, who tuned it as a bass guitar).

Sessions for the album commenced in January 1968 with the recording of Thomas's "Legend of a Mind". The song's title does not appear in the lyrics, which reference LSD guru Timothy Leary and his astral plane. A prominent line in the song is "Timothy Leary's dead"/"No, no, no, he's outside looking in", which would carry new meaning upon Leary's death in 1997, when his ashes were launched into space.

Having already experimented with spoken word interludes on "Morning Glory" and "Late Lament" on Days of Future Passed, the Moody Blues tried the practice again on In Search of the Lost Chord, on the Grame Edge-penned pieces "Departure" and "The Word." Both pieces were recited by Pinder, who was the primary reciter of Edge's poems on this and other Moody Blues albums.

In Search of The Lost Chord. Deram (Decca), 1968
Deram MML 711 mono 1968

Departure

Ride My See-Saw

Dr. Livingston, I Presume

House Of Four Doors

Legend Of A Mind

House Of Four Doors (Part 2)

Voices In The Sky

The Best Way To Travel

Visions Of Paradise

The Actor

The Word

OM

moodies1insearch.jpg

A Lost Chord

Seated one day at the Organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an angel's Psalm
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With  touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence,
As if it were loathe to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
That came from the soul of the organ
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,-
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.
 

words: Adelaide A. Proctor
 
music: Sir Arthur Sullivan

The Original Lost Chord
from the National Library of Australia

1825 - 1864
English poet and reformer
and author of A Lost Chord

one half of the team of
Gilbert and Sullivan
and composer of the music
for A Lost Chord

recorded pre-1926
from a poem by
Adelaide Anne Procter. 1825-1864

The Moody Blues Album 
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