The previous entry described the breathtaking vistas of leaving Sicily: the following morning's arrival at the port of Napoli was equally stunning. Our day began with an excursion to Pompeii, the fabled city preserved under ash for some 1800 years. As is my wont, I followed my own path and left the group to wonder and explore the ruins alone. It was fitting I found the group again an hour later, after coming upon one of the oldest and most interesting of the preserved floor mosaics, a black dog, marking the house of the mad poet.
It would be unfair to call a place as storied as Pompeii a tourist trap. It is, however, as crowded as Disney, and attracts some of the same set. Leaving the main colonnade of the forum, I explored the perimeters of the ancient city, heading to the alluringly named House of Mystery, following one of the few paths lined with vegetation. In so doing, I came upon the brightest field of poppies I'd every seen. I was one of several visitors snapping shots of the field, so vibrantly alive a sight after the ruins.
Following the morning trip to Pompeii, we headed into the center of Naples to prepare for our next recital. Appropriately, we programmed Neapolitan songs from both the 18th & 19th centuries (Amy sang from the ubiquitous "24 Italian Songs & Arias" --a collection every voice student in the U.S. knows, whether they like it or not! I sang a couple of the Neapolitan "standards," hyper-aware of essaying a distinct Italian dialect in front of the natives). The heart of the program was music of Puccini. In addition to the Act I arias and duet from Boheme, we offered the Butterfly duet, Amy sang the Canzone di Doretta from La Rondine, and I threw discretion to the Mediterranean wind and sang Nessun Dorma (with Amy joining me for the climactic line--not quite 3 tenors, but 1 tenor & soprano sufficed just fine).
We were duly humbled and grateful to be so well received by our Neapolitan hosts, the tour guides, and the staff at the amazing 17th century Palazzo, Pio Monte della Misericordia. Attached to the cathedral of the same name, the space housed both a long-established charitable foundation and a stunning collection of Neapolitan Art. We could not have asked for more beautiful surroundings in which to sing. If the Mediterranean cruise was not inspiring enough, the historically significant venues only fueled our performing desires further. The centerpiece of the Misericordia cathedral is a Caravaggio altarpiece depicting the 7 fundamental virtues and centering the focus and mission of this important space.
We were shuttled back to the ship and left another memorable port, with the historic fort of Naples receding into the background as we passed alongside Vesuvius. On the way out we passed more famed Italian islands like Capri, but even more important to me, Ischia. A haven for 20th century artist including William Walton, W. H. Auden & Chester Kallmann, Hans Werner Henze, and Ingeborg Bachmann. It was Auden & Kallmann's cat, Lucina, memorialized in a poem Henze set, that inspired the name of my own Luci. Auden told the composer his little elegy was modeled on an ancient Icelandic verse form:
In Memoriam L.K.A. 1950-1952
At peace under this mandarin, sleep, Lucina,
Blue-eyed Queen of white cats: for you the Ischian
wave shall weep,
When we who miss you are American dust, and
steep
Epomeo in peace and war augustly a grave-watch
keep.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Travel Journal: Palermo
[Another in an ongoing series of travel essays about our recent Mediterranean Music cruise; pictures are available on our website]
Following our excursion to Dubrovnik, we spent the only "day at sea" this eventful 9-day itinerary offered. James Hepokoski, music historian at Yale, and the author of the Cambridge opera handbooks on Otello and Falstaff (and therefore the source of much of my own research for performing roles in those operas in Roanoke this season) was onboard. Jim offered insightful, witty, and engaging talks on Mediterranean-tinged music. On this particular day he talked about the Tarantella, the famed Italian dance, and made associations from the "dance of death" to the tarantula to the psycho-stress disorder of tarantism, eventually wending his away around the heel of Italy's boot to the great tradition of Neapolitan songs.
Also on board was the director of the Aspen music festival, the composer, Alan Fletcher. Alan gave a series of engaging talks on how we listen, what we hear, and why we respond the ways we do. On this particular day he adroitly demonstrated the unique balance and symmetry of the major scale, and then proceeded to use the score of Carmen to illustrate how tonal music depicts character, emotion, and psychology.
We experienced our first "rough" night at sea--we were enjoying a lovely dinner with our new friends, the authors Joe Page and Martha Gil-Montero. Joe had served in the Coast Guard and thus enjoyed the weather, and his equanimity helped me maintain mine--the 5'-7' waves were just enough to challenge your balance but not enough to make you "lose your legs."
After passing through the famed mythical strait of the Scylla, we arrived in Palermo, Sicily. I decided to forgo the morning excursion to the famed cathedral of Monreale. Based on the pictures Amy took, its clear I missed a stunning example of ancient mosaics, murals, and architecture.
That afternoon brought the first of back-to-back full-bodied Italian programs (in Palermo and Naples, respectively) for us. The Palermo program consisted primarily of Verdi--the gran duetto from Un Ballo en Maschera, arias from Rigoletto & Don Carlo, and the Act I duet and scena from Traviata. The concert was held in the Palazzo Raffadali, an 18th century Palace still presided over by a bona fide Principessa. The ballroom held a beautiful Pleyel piano, a restored 19th century instrument that did not sound nearly as pristine as it looked. Regardless, this program was a thrill to sing, and was very well received (we felt incredibly grateful to be so congratulated by the locals in our audiences). It was followed by a fantastic reception, where the hit of the glamorous spread were trays of what appeared to be petit fours but were scrumptious squares of gelato.
Following a too-soon departure from a port whetting one's appetite for more, we were afforded another series of breathtaking vistas of the Mediterranean. The Sicilian archipelago was just such a one.
Following our excursion to Dubrovnik, we spent the only "day at sea" this eventful 9-day itinerary offered. James Hepokoski, music historian at Yale, and the author of the Cambridge opera handbooks on Otello and Falstaff (and therefore the source of much of my own research for performing roles in those operas in Roanoke this season) was onboard. Jim offered insightful, witty, and engaging talks on Mediterranean-tinged music. On this particular day he talked about the Tarantella, the famed Italian dance, and made associations from the "dance of death" to the tarantula to the psycho-stress disorder of tarantism, eventually wending his away around the heel of Italy's boot to the great tradition of Neapolitan songs.
Also on board was the director of the Aspen music festival, the composer, Alan Fletcher. Alan gave a series of engaging talks on how we listen, what we hear, and why we respond the ways we do. On this particular day he adroitly demonstrated the unique balance and symmetry of the major scale, and then proceeded to use the score of Carmen to illustrate how tonal music depicts character, emotion, and psychology.
We experienced our first "rough" night at sea--we were enjoying a lovely dinner with our new friends, the authors Joe Page and Martha Gil-Montero. Joe had served in the Coast Guard and thus enjoyed the weather, and his equanimity helped me maintain mine--the 5'-7' waves were just enough to challenge your balance but not enough to make you "lose your legs."
After passing through the famed mythical strait of the Scylla, we arrived in Palermo, Sicily. I decided to forgo the morning excursion to the famed cathedral of Monreale. Based on the pictures Amy took, its clear I missed a stunning example of ancient mosaics, murals, and architecture.
That afternoon brought the first of back-to-back full-bodied Italian programs (in Palermo and Naples, respectively) for us. The Palermo program consisted primarily of Verdi--the gran duetto from Un Ballo en Maschera, arias from Rigoletto & Don Carlo, and the Act I duet and scena from Traviata. The concert was held in the Palazzo Raffadali, an 18th century Palace still presided over by a bona fide Principessa. The ballroom held a beautiful Pleyel piano, a restored 19th century instrument that did not sound nearly as pristine as it looked. Regardless, this program was a thrill to sing, and was very well received (we felt incredibly grateful to be so congratulated by the locals in our audiences). It was followed by a fantastic reception, where the hit of the glamorous spread were trays of what appeared to be petit fours but were scrumptious squares of gelato.
Following a too-soon departure from a port whetting one's appetite for more, we were afforded another series of breathtaking vistas of the Mediterranean. The Sicilian archipelago was just such a one.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Travel Journal: Croatia
The previous entry about Venice was the first in a series of travel essays about our Mediterranean Music Cruise from Venice to Barcelona, May 16-28.
Photos from the trip are available on our website: http://web.me.com/cofieldwilliamson/home/Welcome.html
After boarding the 57 cabin cruise liner, the Corinthian II, we left Venice and sailed for Croatia. After a day at sea, the mountains of Croatia were a welcome and glorious sight. Our first stop was Split, one of the largest cities in Croatia, home to a beautiful port, an imposing football (soccer) stadium, an 1800 year-old palace from the Roman emperor Diocletian, and the highest number of shoe shops per capita in the world.
Our first stop was the impressive home of Split's (and Croatia's) greatest 20th century artist, the sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. French critics claim his time in Rodin's studio was a formative influence, while his Croatian devotees find it was Rodin who was the artist under the influence. Regardless, Mestrovic's work is bold & original. His figures are literally larger than life in scope, shape, and motion. His work captures the complexity of 20th century human existence with unflinching courage. Aside from Giacometti's anguished & existentialist "thin men" I have not encountered such pained expressions. Yet his work is not easily pigeon-holed and his connection to history, especially the Renaissance, is movingly on display in a Pieta which is one of the greatest examples of that genre after Michelangelo. A biography storied by intrigue (he lived with his wife and his mistress in an odd menage) he was also a deeply religious man, and spent the last decade of his life as a professor in Amy's home town of South Bend, IN, at the famed University of Notre Dame.
Following that unexpectedly rich experience, we walked around the old city center, where walls from Diocletian's 3rd century palace are still occupied, making it the oldest ongoing "home" in the world. After visiting ancient chapels, crypts, caverns and rooms, we enjoyed the first concert of the trip by Festival Chamber Music, played in the naturally air conditioned basement of the palace--an aesthetically pleasing but practically unsatisfactory space (too cold & too damp, especially for instruments!).
The following day we arrived in Dubrovnik, and knew instantly why it is considered the feather in Croatia's tourist cap, and one of Venice's rivals in Adriatic/Mediterranean history. A stunningly beautiful port is one of the city's crowning features, and our recital at the historic Fort Revelin afforded many views to confirm this. We did not take the walking tour of the city, but did not mind, as the Fort afforded panoramic views of the port and the sea, the ancient walled city, and one of the jewels of the Dalmatian coast.
Following our first recital--a French romantic program featuring a good dose of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette--we had a late lunch with our fellow musicians in a restaurant off the main drag recommended by all the local guides. Specializing in fresh seafood, Amy had a delicious risotto with mussels. While my Italian is passable as far as getting around is concerned, I was totally reliant on the translations of the Croatian menu, and so I thought my "fried little fish" would be a lunch-sized fried fillet. I had one of those entertaining experiences of foreign travel--not exactly culture "shock" (more like culture surprise) when I received a plate full of barely breaded sardines. Fish is one of the few foods about which I'm picky (I love virtually all white fish, cooked any style, same goes with heartier fish like mahi, tuna, etc. But I have never acquired a taste for salmon or sardines).
I did make a small dent in a plate which seemed to be performing one of Christ's miracles--I swear those little fish multiplied every time I ate one. We had a great time, and enjoyed some drinkable Croatian beer which tasted even better than it otherwise would have!
The too-brief excursion to Dubrovnik ended with more amazing vistas of the Dalmatian coast and the city itself, as we sailed on towards Sicily.
Photos from the trip are available on our website: http://web.me.com/cofieldwilliamson/home/Welcome.html
After boarding the 57 cabin cruise liner, the Corinthian II, we left Venice and sailed for Croatia. After a day at sea, the mountains of Croatia were a welcome and glorious sight. Our first stop was Split, one of the largest cities in Croatia, home to a beautiful port, an imposing football (soccer) stadium, an 1800 year-old palace from the Roman emperor Diocletian, and the highest number of shoe shops per capita in the world.
Our first stop was the impressive home of Split's (and Croatia's) greatest 20th century artist, the sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. French critics claim his time in Rodin's studio was a formative influence, while his Croatian devotees find it was Rodin who was the artist under the influence. Regardless, Mestrovic's work is bold & original. His figures are literally larger than life in scope, shape, and motion. His work captures the complexity of 20th century human existence with unflinching courage. Aside from Giacometti's anguished & existentialist "thin men" I have not encountered such pained expressions. Yet his work is not easily pigeon-holed and his connection to history, especially the Renaissance, is movingly on display in a Pieta which is one of the greatest examples of that genre after Michelangelo. A biography storied by intrigue (he lived with his wife and his mistress in an odd menage) he was also a deeply religious man, and spent the last decade of his life as a professor in Amy's home town of South Bend, IN, at the famed University of Notre Dame.
Following that unexpectedly rich experience, we walked around the old city center, where walls from Diocletian's 3rd century palace are still occupied, making it the oldest ongoing "home" in the world. After visiting ancient chapels, crypts, caverns and rooms, we enjoyed the first concert of the trip by Festival Chamber Music, played in the naturally air conditioned basement of the palace--an aesthetically pleasing but practically unsatisfactory space (too cold & too damp, especially for instruments!).
The following day we arrived in Dubrovnik, and knew instantly why it is considered the feather in Croatia's tourist cap, and one of Venice's rivals in Adriatic/Mediterranean history. A stunningly beautiful port is one of the city's crowning features, and our recital at the historic Fort Revelin afforded many views to confirm this. We did not take the walking tour of the city, but did not mind, as the Fort afforded panoramic views of the port and the sea, the ancient walled city, and one of the jewels of the Dalmatian coast.
Following our first recital--a French romantic program featuring a good dose of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette--we had a late lunch with our fellow musicians in a restaurant off the main drag recommended by all the local guides. Specializing in fresh seafood, Amy had a delicious risotto with mussels. While my Italian is passable as far as getting around is concerned, I was totally reliant on the translations of the Croatian menu, and so I thought my "fried little fish" would be a lunch-sized fried fillet. I had one of those entertaining experiences of foreign travel--not exactly culture "shock" (more like culture surprise) when I received a plate full of barely breaded sardines. Fish is one of the few foods about which I'm picky (I love virtually all white fish, cooked any style, same goes with heartier fish like mahi, tuna, etc. But I have never acquired a taste for salmon or sardines).
I did make a small dent in a plate which seemed to be performing one of Christ's miracles--I swear those little fish multiplied every time I ate one. We had a great time, and enjoyed some drinkable Croatian beer which tasted even better than it otherwise would have!
The too-brief excursion to Dubrovnik ended with more amazing vistas of the Dalmatian coast and the city itself, as we sailed on towards Sicily.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Travel journal: Venice
Venice is the most alluring, enchanting, and poetic city I have visited. From the moment Amy and I boarded our water taxi to our departure on board the Corinthian II 60 hours later, Venice exceeded our already high expectations. We didn't realize just how fortunate we were to have our travel agent arrange that water taxi from the airport until the boat pulled up to the Hotel alla Salute via one of La Serenissima's innumerable canals, where we stepped off the boat and into the hotel lobby. Along the aquatic way of the most scenic and enjoyable airport transfer ever, we passed the glass-blowing shops of Murano, wound around the little island where Stravinsky & Dhiagalev are buried, and then rounded a corner to catch our first glimpse of one of the world's most glorious edifices, the basilica of San Marco.
The Hotel alla Salute is around the corner from another great basilica, Maria della Salute, just across the grand canal from St Marks square. Just ten minutes or so from the Gallerie dell'Accademia, we visited the great museum of the Venetian Renaissance first. Museums in Venice are a classic guilding of the lily, since the city's cathedrals are museums in and of themselves.
The Accademia is rightly famed for its impressive collection of Tiziano (Titian) and Tintoretto, two of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. I was struck by Tintoretto's visionary "Creation of the Animals" which featured epoch spanning creatures like a fanged fish, a blazing bird, and a unicorn which seemed to sneak into the canvas. Bellini's "Madonna dei Cherubini Rossi" is a strikingly original iconic painting which lives up to its name. The cherubims are of so brilliant a red they not only appear modern, but they look like one of Andy Warhol's colorful screenprints. At the other end of the scale is Tiziano's haunting "Pieta," reminding us why he is considered Michelangelo's equal.
The visit to the Academy was followed by the first of a series of delectable, mutli-course Venetian meals. One doesn't know just how green Ireland is until the first visit; likewise, one has a new understanding and appreciation of the wonderful simplicity of real olive oil and fresh pasta after that first genuine Italian meal. Since it was Amy's first visit to Italy, one of many pleasures I enjoyed was watching her face as she took her first bite of bruschetta (the middle syllable is pronounced with a hard k, for the record). This was surpassed only by the pleasure of witnessing her first bite of gnocchi. I was grateful to be reminded just how tasty a simple Italian tomato sauce is when I had a plate of penne arrabiate.
After lunch we explored some of the labyrinthine alleys and canals en route to San Marco. We stopped at the cathedral of San Stephano, one of the large churches whose roofs were built by boatmakers. The wooden panels and crossbeams resemble what Noah's Arc might have looked like had it been built by Gondolieri! Splendid altars, replete with frescoes & sculptures line the sides of these cathedrals, and the mosaic floors and patterned ceilings are works of art themselves. We also visited San Salvador, which could double as a Tiziano museum (it has the most magnificent Transfiguration I've seen).
Following a map to get around Venice is an exercise in futility. Intuition, curiousity, and a sense of adventure are much better guides. That fact was made crystal clear when we rounded another canal-lined corner, passed under an archway and emerged at the back of St Marks square. A thousand pigeons and at least as many people could not come between that moment and me. After visiting St Marks square, taking in the bell tower and clock tower, the basilica and the surrounding palaces, and the grand canal, I felt that deep and unique appreciation that comes from visiting a great and justly famous place. It is one of the distinct joys of travel: the justification for it, the substance of the experience, and that which gives experience meaning.
We arrived late in the day, decided to forgo the Ducal palace, and waited in line to visit the Basilica itself. Our necks hurt from the awe-struck act of gazing at the endless gold mosaics which depict the stories and saints from the creation to the resurrection. We ascended the stairs to visit the Gallerie dei Cavalli (the Gallery of Horses) where fragments of the original, 1500 year old mosaics and the even older bronze horses reside. Besides a bird's eye view of the Basilica's mosaics, a balcony overlooking the square afforded us more unforgettable vistas.
We had dinner at another locally recommended Osteria, the aptly named Oneteca ai Artisti, around the corner from the Accademia, which featured exceptional pasta and pesce (fish), followed by the best chocolate torta either of us have had.
Our second day in Venice was just as eventful and memorable. After San Marco, THE cathedral to visit is the Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Frari (or the Frari). There is so much to see in the vast basilica that I forgive the author of my Lonely Planet Venice guide for omitting that Claudio Monteverdi is buried there! I suppose some would not be as impressed by the altar to Venice's greatest composer after viewing Tiziano's sumptious Madonna. This most famous of altars features Titian's signature red robe in absolute splendour. Approaching the altar is the most intricately & beautifully carved wooden choir loft. With seating for about 80 choiristers, it is no wonder Venice was home to the glorious music of the Italian baroque period.
Just around the corner from the Frari church is the smaller school and church of San Rocco. Another important home both for the Venetian baroque of Monteverdi & Gabrieli, and a veritable museum for Tintoretto. The San Rocco sanctuary is lined from wall to ceiling with frescoes and murals, making the visit to this corner of Venezia positively overwhelming.
The Hotel alla Salute is around the corner from another great basilica, Maria della Salute, just across the grand canal from St Marks square. Just ten minutes or so from the Gallerie dell'Accademia, we visited the great museum of the Venetian Renaissance first. Museums in Venice are a classic guilding of the lily, since the city's cathedrals are museums in and of themselves.
The Accademia is rightly famed for its impressive collection of Tiziano (Titian) and Tintoretto, two of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance. I was struck by Tintoretto's visionary "Creation of the Animals" which featured epoch spanning creatures like a fanged fish, a blazing bird, and a unicorn which seemed to sneak into the canvas. Bellini's "Madonna dei Cherubini Rossi" is a strikingly original iconic painting which lives up to its name. The cherubims are of so brilliant a red they not only appear modern, but they look like one of Andy Warhol's colorful screenprints. At the other end of the scale is Tiziano's haunting "Pieta," reminding us why he is considered Michelangelo's equal.
The visit to the Academy was followed by the first of a series of delectable, mutli-course Venetian meals. One doesn't know just how green Ireland is until the first visit; likewise, one has a new understanding and appreciation of the wonderful simplicity of real olive oil and fresh pasta after that first genuine Italian meal. Since it was Amy's first visit to Italy, one of many pleasures I enjoyed was watching her face as she took her first bite of bruschetta (the middle syllable is pronounced with a hard k, for the record). This was surpassed only by the pleasure of witnessing her first bite of gnocchi. I was grateful to be reminded just how tasty a simple Italian tomato sauce is when I had a plate of penne arrabiate.
After lunch we explored some of the labyrinthine alleys and canals en route to San Marco. We stopped at the cathedral of San Stephano, one of the large churches whose roofs were built by boatmakers. The wooden panels and crossbeams resemble what Noah's Arc might have looked like had it been built by Gondolieri! Splendid altars, replete with frescoes & sculptures line the sides of these cathedrals, and the mosaic floors and patterned ceilings are works of art themselves. We also visited San Salvador, which could double as a Tiziano museum (it has the most magnificent Transfiguration I've seen).
Following a map to get around Venice is an exercise in futility. Intuition, curiousity, and a sense of adventure are much better guides. That fact was made crystal clear when we rounded another canal-lined corner, passed under an archway and emerged at the back of St Marks square. A thousand pigeons and at least as many people could not come between that moment and me. After visiting St Marks square, taking in the bell tower and clock tower, the basilica and the surrounding palaces, and the grand canal, I felt that deep and unique appreciation that comes from visiting a great and justly famous place. It is one of the distinct joys of travel: the justification for it, the substance of the experience, and that which gives experience meaning.
We arrived late in the day, decided to forgo the Ducal palace, and waited in line to visit the Basilica itself. Our necks hurt from the awe-struck act of gazing at the endless gold mosaics which depict the stories and saints from the creation to the resurrection. We ascended the stairs to visit the Gallerie dei Cavalli (the Gallery of Horses) where fragments of the original, 1500 year old mosaics and the even older bronze horses reside. Besides a bird's eye view of the Basilica's mosaics, a balcony overlooking the square afforded us more unforgettable vistas.
We had dinner at another locally recommended Osteria, the aptly named Oneteca ai Artisti, around the corner from the Accademia, which featured exceptional pasta and pesce (fish), followed by the best chocolate torta either of us have had.
Our second day in Venice was just as eventful and memorable. After San Marco, THE cathedral to visit is the Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Frari (or the Frari). There is so much to see in the vast basilica that I forgive the author of my Lonely Planet Venice guide for omitting that Claudio Monteverdi is buried there! I suppose some would not be as impressed by the altar to Venice's greatest composer after viewing Tiziano's sumptious Madonna. This most famous of altars features Titian's signature red robe in absolute splendour. Approaching the altar is the most intricately & beautifully carved wooden choir loft. With seating for about 80 choiristers, it is no wonder Venice was home to the glorious music of the Italian baroque period.
Just around the corner from the Frari church is the smaller school and church of San Rocco. Another important home both for the Venetian baroque of Monteverdi & Gabrieli, and a veritable museum for Tintoretto. The San Rocco sanctuary is lined from wall to ceiling with frescoes and murals, making the visit to this corner of Venezia positively overwhelming.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Singing in Strange Lands
The eminent Old Testament scholar and theologian, Walter Brueggemann, writes tellingly about the different modes of Psalms. He divides them into three primary categories. While the contemporary Christian church tends to focus on the pastoral Psalms of thanksgiving and praise, he directs attention to the more idiosyncratically Jewish Psalms of "disorientation" and "new orientation." The Psalms of lamentation and the "penitential Psalms" fall into the former category in articulating the Psalmist's (and the people's) sufferings and tribulations, often from a locus of captivity and/or exile--literal and spiritual.
Psalm 13 opens with a characteristic expression of abandonment & isolation:
"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?"
Psalm 137, one of the most famous of these Psalms, begins in exile:
"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres."
The cessation and absence of song are traits of these exilic lamentations. Such metaphors have been present in the spiritual and aesthetic lives of Psalmists from the Babylonian exile to the Shoah. They have inspired composers from the Renaissance to today, from Palestrina to Arvo Pärt. These poems are complex, invite multiple readings, and resist the pat triumphalism that characterizes much contemporary usage of the Psalms.
Indeed, Theodor Adorno's dictum that "after Auschwitz there can be no poetry" still resonates, as sirens blared in Israel yesterday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. That harrowing annual ritual commemorating the Shoah reminds us that even the starkest Psalmist metaphors can be rendered inadequate.
I have been reacquainting myself with the life and music of Hugo Distler, the early 20th century Lutheran composer and conductor who took his own life in 1942 (he was 34). "Until now I believed that God was with me, but now I believe that he has forsaken me." Echoing Psalm 22 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") Distler's words upon receiving the consription orders from the Nazis drove him to self-inflicted martyrdom. Even more tragically, friends were working to exempt the exceptionally gifted musician from service in the SS, but that news did not reach him in time.
Another artist who has been much on my consciousness lately (see previous posts) is the "mad" poet John Clare. Institionalized for the last 30-some years of his life, Clare echoed the Zionist laments of the exilic Psalms in his letters:
"I am in the ninth year of Captivity among the Babylonians and any news from Home is a Godsend or blessing."
In drawing our attention to the Psalms of disorientation, Brueggemann warns his readers of the uncomfortable landscape they inhabit, with violent language of bitter comlaint and unsated vengeance. While the opening of Psalm 137 vividly evokes captivity, exile, and the unsettling quiet of silenced songs, the end of the Psalm is disturbingly violent:
"O daughter of Babyon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"
I do not presume to be enough of a theologian or literary critic to unpack the layers of significance in such language. I appreciate Brueggemann's identifying of the Psalmists' process (and progression) from despair to vengeance to eventual faithfulness. He describes such cries for vengeance as "venting" and cites their necessity in such a complex relationship.
Clare could be equally violent when describing his captivity and the sufferings (both real and imagined) he endured in the asyla:
"...When people make such mistakes as to call me God's bastard and whores pay me by shutting me up from God's people out of the way of common sense and then take my head off because they can't find me--it out Herods Herod"
Distler, as noted above, felt forsaken, and in another letter describes the political realities of the Nazi regime as a time
"in which God has apparently relinquished power to the Evil One."
With telling self-awareness, he analyzes his own state of mind:
"I suffer increasingly from a chronic despondency that borders on depression and is certainly the result of the irritating war of nerves. There are no words to describe how horrible the present and the near future look to us."
Distler's music expresses the anxiety & fear--the angst--of his time, and his impressive output of sacred music reflects such struggles. Much of his music is based on Lutheran chorales. Distler's motets are masterpieces of the 20th century as Bach's are to the Baroque. And like Bach, Distler does not shrink from the theological and human complexities of sacred poems like Isaiah's "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." (Fürwahr, er trug unsere Krankheit, op. 12, no. 9 is one of Distler's crowning achivements in his unfinished magnum opus of Sacred Choral Music). While Bach often hid the chorale tunes in the middle of dense textures of elaborate counterpoint, Distler's scores are more disjointed. Wide leaps and extended melismas characterize his melodies, haltering rhythms trip over one another as they accelerate, and snippets of recognizable tunes briefly appear, like a swimmer lifting his head above the water to gasp for air. These motets sound like no others, and deserve a wider berth in our appreciation of the tradition. And lest the reader think they are all darkness and despair, Distler struggles to emerge from the abyss and--if not attain--at least glimpse the light.
"May the great light in the midst of the great darkness that dominates the world grow and finally triumph...Most important: that we soon have peace. Let us pray above all for that."
Unlike Psalm 137, most of these Psalms of lamentation contain a pivot point where the disorientation, bitterness &/or vengeance yields to doxology. Distler's quote echoes the pithy example of Psalm 13, the first verse of which opened this essay. The last half of the 6 verse Psalm continues:
" Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say "I have prevailed over him,"
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken."
Then, the seemingly out-of-the-blue (like an unprepared harmonic progression) hinge from demanding complaint to praise:
"But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me."
Through the complex and untidy process of confrontation & complaint, with spiritual & emotional honesty, the Psalmist actively cultivates relationship with God, with remarkable self-awareness of his rights & his place. That is, at least, one reading of the above. In that light, I read Distler's and Clare's writings with a look to the whole, mourn the tragedies of their respective ends and celebrate the affirming power of their work with renewed zest and will.
The Psalmist in 137 asks "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Clare lamented a similar fate with more disturbing imagery when asked about how his poetry was progressing in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, his "home" from 1841 until his death in 1864:
"Why, they have cut off my head and picked out all the letters in the alphabet--all the vowels and all the consonants and brought them out through my ears--and then they want me to write poetry! I can't do it."
And just as the Psalmist uses metaphor to work through the process of negativity via the demands for revenge, Clare managed to retrieve a few vowels and consonants, and like his older colleague, Christopher Smart (another "mad" poet and Britten muse, to be discussed later!) wrote remarkably visionary poetry while institutionalized.
Distler's tombstone contains an epitaph from John 16:33:
"In the world you are afraid, but be of good courage,
for I have overcome the world."
Clare's final poem 'Birds Nests,' contains a similar message of comfort from the sanctuary of Nature:
'Tis Spring warm glows the South
Chaffinchs carry the moss in his mouth
To the filbert hedges all day long
And charms the poet with his beautiful song
Psalm 13 opens with a characteristic expression of abandonment & isolation:
"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?"
Psalm 137, one of the most famous of these Psalms, begins in exile:
"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres."
The cessation and absence of song are traits of these exilic lamentations. Such metaphors have been present in the spiritual and aesthetic lives of Psalmists from the Babylonian exile to the Shoah. They have inspired composers from the Renaissance to today, from Palestrina to Arvo Pärt. These poems are complex, invite multiple readings, and resist the pat triumphalism that characterizes much contemporary usage of the Psalms.
Indeed, Theodor Adorno's dictum that "after Auschwitz there can be no poetry" still resonates, as sirens blared in Israel yesterday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. That harrowing annual ritual commemorating the Shoah reminds us that even the starkest Psalmist metaphors can be rendered inadequate.
I have been reacquainting myself with the life and music of Hugo Distler, the early 20th century Lutheran composer and conductor who took his own life in 1942 (he was 34). "Until now I believed that God was with me, but now I believe that he has forsaken me." Echoing Psalm 22 ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") Distler's words upon receiving the consription orders from the Nazis drove him to self-inflicted martyrdom. Even more tragically, friends were working to exempt the exceptionally gifted musician from service in the SS, but that news did not reach him in time.
Another artist who has been much on my consciousness lately (see previous posts) is the "mad" poet John Clare. Institionalized for the last 30-some years of his life, Clare echoed the Zionist laments of the exilic Psalms in his letters:
"I am in the ninth year of Captivity among the Babylonians and any news from Home is a Godsend or blessing."
In drawing our attention to the Psalms of disorientation, Brueggemann warns his readers of the uncomfortable landscape they inhabit, with violent language of bitter comlaint and unsated vengeance. While the opening of Psalm 137 vividly evokes captivity, exile, and the unsettling quiet of silenced songs, the end of the Psalm is disturbingly violent:
"O daughter of Babyon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"
I do not presume to be enough of a theologian or literary critic to unpack the layers of significance in such language. I appreciate Brueggemann's identifying of the Psalmists' process (and progression) from despair to vengeance to eventual faithfulness. He describes such cries for vengeance as "venting" and cites their necessity in such a complex relationship.
Clare could be equally violent when describing his captivity and the sufferings (both real and imagined) he endured in the asyla:
"...When people make such mistakes as to call me God's bastard and whores pay me by shutting me up from God's people out of the way of common sense and then take my head off because they can't find me--it out Herods Herod"
Distler, as noted above, felt forsaken, and in another letter describes the political realities of the Nazi regime as a time
"in which God has apparently relinquished power to the Evil One."
With telling self-awareness, he analyzes his own state of mind:
"I suffer increasingly from a chronic despondency that borders on depression and is certainly the result of the irritating war of nerves. There are no words to describe how horrible the present and the near future look to us."
Distler's music expresses the anxiety & fear--the angst--of his time, and his impressive output of sacred music reflects such struggles. Much of his music is based on Lutheran chorales. Distler's motets are masterpieces of the 20th century as Bach's are to the Baroque. And like Bach, Distler does not shrink from the theological and human complexities of sacred poems like Isaiah's "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." (Fürwahr, er trug unsere Krankheit, op. 12, no. 9 is one of Distler's crowning achivements in his unfinished magnum opus of Sacred Choral Music). While Bach often hid the chorale tunes in the middle of dense textures of elaborate counterpoint, Distler's scores are more disjointed. Wide leaps and extended melismas characterize his melodies, haltering rhythms trip over one another as they accelerate, and snippets of recognizable tunes briefly appear, like a swimmer lifting his head above the water to gasp for air. These motets sound like no others, and deserve a wider berth in our appreciation of the tradition. And lest the reader think they are all darkness and despair, Distler struggles to emerge from the abyss and--if not attain--at least glimpse the light.
"May the great light in the midst of the great darkness that dominates the world grow and finally triumph...Most important: that we soon have peace. Let us pray above all for that."
Unlike Psalm 137, most of these Psalms of lamentation contain a pivot point where the disorientation, bitterness &/or vengeance yields to doxology. Distler's quote echoes the pithy example of Psalm 13, the first verse of which opened this essay. The last half of the 6 verse Psalm continues:
" Consider and answer me, O Lord my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say "I have prevailed over him,"
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken."
Then, the seemingly out-of-the-blue (like an unprepared harmonic progression) hinge from demanding complaint to praise:
"But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me."
Through the complex and untidy process of confrontation & complaint, with spiritual & emotional honesty, the Psalmist actively cultivates relationship with God, with remarkable self-awareness of his rights & his place. That is, at least, one reading of the above. In that light, I read Distler's and Clare's writings with a look to the whole, mourn the tragedies of their respective ends and celebrate the affirming power of their work with renewed zest and will.
The Psalmist in 137 asks "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Clare lamented a similar fate with more disturbing imagery when asked about how his poetry was progressing in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, his "home" from 1841 until his death in 1864:
"Why, they have cut off my head and picked out all the letters in the alphabet--all the vowels and all the consonants and brought them out through my ears--and then they want me to write poetry! I can't do it."
And just as the Psalmist uses metaphor to work through the process of negativity via the demands for revenge, Clare managed to retrieve a few vowels and consonants, and like his older colleague, Christopher Smart (another "mad" poet and Britten muse, to be discussed later!) wrote remarkably visionary poetry while institutionalized.
Distler's tombstone contains an epitaph from John 16:33:
"In the world you are afraid, but be of good courage,
for I have overcome the world."
Clare's final poem 'Birds Nests,' contains a similar message of comfort from the sanctuary of Nature:
'Tis Spring warm glows the South
Chaffinchs carry the moss in his mouth
To the filbert hedges all day long
And charms the poet with his beautiful song
Thursday, April 16, 2009
"Crazy crackd braind fellow"
Franz Wright begins his wry poem, "Publication Date" with this observation:
One of the few pleasures of writing
is the thought of one's books in the hands of a kindhearted
intelligent person somewhere. I can't remember what the others
are right now.
The British "peasant poet" John Clare (1793-1864; see end of previous post re: Britten Project) may or may not posthumously agree with Wright. But the two share a sensibility for the artist's tenuous foothold in life, his shifting relationship with the cosmos, and a conscience plagued by pendulum swings that range from mountain-top exhilaration to valley-of-death despair (we use the pallid diagnosis "bipolar disorder" today. "Manic-depressive" is a better descriptor of these competing poles of consciousness).
As he worked on his first book of poetry, Clare wrote in his autobiography, with portentous self-awareness:
I felt awkwardly situated and knew not which way to proceed.
I had a variety of minds about me and all of them unsettled.
Often compared to Robert Burns, both for cultivating a style of writing beholden to folk-song, & vernacular speech (as opposed to a learned "academic" style) and for falling victim to vice, Clare's first publisher wrote:
It is to be greatly feared that the man will be afflicted with insanity
One of the few pleasures of writing
is the thought of one's books in the hands of a kindhearted
intelligent person somewhere. I can't remember what the others
are right now.
The British "peasant poet" John Clare (1793-1864; see end of previous post re: Britten Project) may or may not posthumously agree with Wright. But the two share a sensibility for the artist's tenuous foothold in life, his shifting relationship with the cosmos, and a conscience plagued by pendulum swings that range from mountain-top exhilaration to valley-of-death despair (we use the pallid diagnosis "bipolar disorder" today. "Manic-depressive" is a better descriptor of these competing poles of consciousness).
As he worked on his first book of poetry, Clare wrote in his autobiography, with portentous self-awareness:
I felt awkwardly situated and knew not which way to proceed.
I had a variety of minds about me and all of them unsettled.
Often compared to Robert Burns, both for cultivating a style of writing beholden to folk-song, & vernacular speech (as opposed to a learned "academic" style) and for falling victim to vice, Clare's first publisher wrote:
It is to be greatly feared that the man will be afflicted with insanity
if his talent continues to be forced as it has been...
he has no other mode of easing the fever that oppresses him
after a tremendous fit of rhyming except by getting tipsy...
after a tremendous fit of rhyming except by getting tipsy...
Then he is melancholy and completely hypochondriac.
Wright's poem continues with a similar temperamental sea-change:
I just noticed that it is my own private
National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever).
After achieving a burst of fame & notoriety as the rustic, peasant poet & uncultured genius, Clare presciently saw the writing on the wall (he had little formal education and worked as an agricultural labourer to support his parents and siblings):
I am sought after very much agen [sic] now...
Wright's poem continues with a similar temperamental sea-change:
I just noticed that it is my own private
National I Hate Myself and Want to Die Day
(which means the next day I will love my life
and want to live forever).
After achieving a burst of fame & notoriety as the rustic, peasant poet & uncultured genius, Clare presciently saw the writing on the wall (he had little formal education and worked as an agricultural labourer to support his parents and siblings):
I am sought after very much agen [sic] now...
some rather entertaining people and some d----d knowing fools--
but let me wait another year or two and the peep show will be over--
but let me wait another year or two and the peep show will be over--
and my vanity if I have any will end
in its proper mortification to know that obscurity is happiness
in its proper mortification to know that obscurity is happiness
and that John Clare the thresher in the onset
and neglected rhymer in the end
and neglected rhymer in the end
are the only two comfortable periods of his life.
Though largely self-taught as a writer and reader, Clare was an astute observer and critic, and the inimitably colorful language of his poetry and prose became a trademark (and puts him near the level of his Romantic contemporaries like Coleridge, Byron & Keats). Here is one such observation, replete with his characteristically idiosyncratic spelling & grammar:
Wordsworth defies all art and in all the lunatic Enthuseism of nature
he negligently sets down his thoughts from the tongue of his inspirer.
Though largely self-taught as a writer and reader, Clare was an astute observer and critic, and the inimitably colorful language of his poetry and prose became a trademark (and puts him near the level of his Romantic contemporaries like Coleridge, Byron & Keats). Here is one such observation, replete with his characteristically idiosyncratic spelling & grammar:
Wordsworth defies all art and in all the lunatic Enthuseism of nature
he negligently sets down his thoughts from the tongue of his inspirer.
Clare also demonstrated his grasp of relations where business
is concerned in self-effacing imagery to his publisher,
while working on his second collection:
"I have been trying songs and want your judgment only either to
stop me or set me off again at full gallop which your disaproval
or applause has as much power to effect as if spoken by a majician--
the rod of criticism in your hand has as much power over your
poor sinful rhymer as the rod of Aaron in the land of Egypt.
Biblical references pepper Clare's writing and his shifting,
doubt-ridden faith anticipates such eminent writers as Hardy.
Both poets articulated their doubts about institutionalized religion
while outlining creeds extolling the enduring presence of Nature.
Wright's poem comes from his latest book, "God's Silence" a masterful sequence of poems charting the journey of life and faith and the artist's struggle to find & create meaning in the midst of the ever-shifting seasons. "Publication Date" continues:
The forecast calls
for a cold night in Boston all morning
and all afternoon. They say
tomorrow will be just like today,
only different. I'm in the cemetery now
at the edge of town, how did I get here?
By the time Clare was institutionalized for "madness"
he must have asked the same question.
He maintained a sense of self-awareness even as he
struggled with his temperament:
I am in that muddy melancholy again--my ideas keep swimming
and shiftingin sleepy drowziness from one thing to another--
this letter will denote the crazy crackd braind fellow it has left behind.
Clare's poetry is at its best when making connections between
the world of nature and the lost innocence of humanity.
Birds, flowers and trees represent the ineffable beauty of nature
while simultaneously standing for the indiscriminate transience
of life. He would so identify with nature he would literally
adapt the voices of birds in his writing.
Presaging by more than a century the mystic French composer,
Olivier Messiaen (who eccentrically chronicled hundreds of bird-calls
he then transcribed into his scores), Clare wrote:
Of stranger witching notes was heard
As if it was a stranger bird:
"Wew-wew wew-wew chur-chur chur-chur
Woo-it woo-it"--could this be her?
"Tee-rew tee-rew tee-rew tee-rew
Chew-rit chew-rit"--and ever new--
"Ever new" indeed does Clare's poetry still read nearly two hundred years after the publication of his first visionary book.
Wright's enigmatic poem ends with the surreal image of another poet (Garcia Lorca) speaking-- through the medium of a sparrow--a message of comfort we can only assume would have spoken to Clare, and all the other "crazy crackd braind" folks out there, reading, writing, dreaming, playing and praying their way through the world:
A sparrow limps past on its little bone crutch saying
I am Federico Garcia Lorca
risen from the dead--
literature will lose, sunlight will win, don't worry.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Britten Project: Take 1
As I wrote in my program notes for the upcoming VC concert, we are kicking-off an exciting venture with our Britten Project. Over the next five seasons we will explore and perform most of the a capella and small-scale choral works of the greatest composer to set the English language since Purcell. We will revisit old favorites like "Ceremony of Carols" and collaborate with the Virginia Children's Chorus on the early choral masterpiece, "A Boy was Born" and offer many of the short anthems and hymns, among other cycles and cantatas. We are starting with these performances of the "Five Flower Songs," and culminating in a St Cecilia Day-Britten Centennial concert on his birthday November 22, 2013 (OK, that's not on the books YET, but we're looking ahead...). It is fitting that one of the most prodigious and gifted composers of the 20th century was born on the name-day of the patron saint of music, St Cecilia.
As I was sharing with the singers following a rehearsal earlier this week, one of the traits that sets Britten apart from other vocal/choral composers is his facile and refined use of instrumental textures to shape his writing for voices. The most obvious example in the Flower Songs is the closing "Ballad of Green Broom" in which an anonymous poem is set like a folksong with guitar accompaniment. The melody is passed from voice to voice, while the other 3 accompanying voices sing short words that sound like plucked or strum guitar chords (in every varying arrangements, to accommodate the shifting voice of the melody--Tenor/SAB; Bass/SAT; etc). The poem is a ballad about a lazy young man--"without thought, without good" who is finally roused from lethargy to go to work as a woodsman--"cutting broom"-- and on his way passes by a Lady's "fine house" who calls for him to come and marry "a lady in full bloom"--seeing a way out of his labor "Johnny gave his consent/and to church they both went."
As the narrative picks up momentum, so does the tempo, and Britten varies the accompanying figures, building to a pair of dizzying duets where the voices literally chase one another (B/T followed by A/S). This tumbling section leads to a climactic verse where all 4 voices come together for the only time in the piece, an accomplished gesture that is punctuated with a virtuosic tag on the recurring emblematic phrase "green Broom."
Even when Britten is not emulating specifically instrumental techniques in his choral works, his use of texture is imaginative and varied. For example, the opening Flower Song, a bright arrangement of Robert Herrick's "To Daffodils" conjures the image of flowers blowing in the breeze. Paired voices frame the piece (S/B & A/T) in a charming duet. The middle section features the upper three voices in staccato chords (like offstage brass) while the basses pick up the melody from the opening soprano line under which they originally harmonized. The gently churning rhythm, the subtly shifting harmonies and textures mirror the poetic subject: flowers that "haste away so soon."
The second Herrick setting, "The Succession of the Four Sweet Months" echoes the Renaissance madrigal text perfectly. The four months, April-July, are taken up by the four voices in a classic miniature of imitative polyphony, as befitting its madrigalesque subject. Britten finishes this song with a succinct demonstration of his craftsmanship: a five bar codetta featuring each part with its respective month (S=April, A=May, T=June, B=July), the S & B outlining the home-key, while the inner voices flirt with a harmonic modulation unpredictable enough to pique our interest to the final resolution.
The middle two works are the heart of this cycle, and feature two poets dear to Britten. George Crabbe lived on the same street in Aldeburgh Britten and Pears eventually would. Aldeburgh is an unforgettable place. A tiny sea-side town on the east coast of England, just far enough up to feel the chill of the North Sea in all but the warmest months, it is surrounded by marshes and wetlands which lend it a special aura and fill it with memorable aromas. Aldeburgh has amazing fish and chips, which are best enjoyed sitting on the shingle as the imposing tide that inspired so much of Britten's music crashes at your feet. Crabbe wrote a book-length poem called The Borough, and it would inspire Britten's first opera, Peter Grimes, which catapulted the barely 30-year-old composer to fame. Peter Grimes is an outcast--a loner, a dreamer, a melancholy & troubled man who struggles in professional and personal life, to put it blandly. Britten and Pears identified with the loner & dreamer outcast in Grimes. His struggle between good and evil, innocence and corruption would parallel a leitmotif that would weave through Britten's work, culminating in his last opera, Death in Venice.
That is all to say the juxtaposition of Crabbe's "Marsh Flowers" with the mad, outcast, "peasant poet" John Clare's "Evening Primrose" is significant, and requires our attention. Never mind that Britten, a copious letter reader and writer and chronicler of his whereabouts and goings on where his and Pears' life and work were concerned did not even mention the Flower songs until AFTER they were completed (and this is unusual). And even then he did not have much to say about them, other than drawing an inquiring conductor's attention to the connection between "Marsh Flowers" and Peter Grimes! So, I find it telling that the harsh, acerbic world of the miniature masterpiece that is "Marsh Flowers" comes from the same source that inspired the first of Britten's intensely personal dozen-or-so operas. The Borough (=Aldeburgh--ie: a small town filled with, among other things, gossip...familiar, anyone?!?) represents the judgmental, closed, hypocritical "status quo" against which the artist/outsider/outcast struggles. "Marsh Flowers" ostensibly chronicles some of the more unpleasant flora in the salt-marsh and sea-side town, but it is a short leap to the metaphor comparing the "poisoned stings" of the "fiery nettle" to the harsh treatment from small-town opprobrium. Britten sets paired voice against one another (this time S/T and A/B) and the angular descriptors of the flora are exchanged in sinewy lines with short, dissonant stings. Britten sets the pairs in contrary motion so that crossing melodies mean crossing harmonies, peppered with mixed thirds (ie: a & a# simultaneously). The "fiery nettle" is set with a dramatic portamento (slide) up the octave for all four voices, and its "poison'd stings" painted with a texture that performs the poetic image with twisted melodies, harmony and rhythm. A double canon (T imitating S, B following A) mirrors the image of the fern growing "in ev'ry chink." The wind-tossed seaweed inspires another colorful bit of word-painting, as the paired voices sing their dissonant duet in contrary motion so they are literally "rolling up and down."
John Clare was a younger contemporary of Crabbe and one of the greatest of England's unschooled poets. Like another Britten muse, Christopher Smart (poet of "Rejoice in the Lamb" and source of my cat Jeoffry's name), Clare was institutionalized for madness. Or what is known today as bipolar disorder. So, another melancholy and troubled artist, another outcast & loner, and another muse. "Evening Primrose" is the beautiful heart of the cycle, an intimate, shimmering part-song about a delicate flower that blooms once, and only at night (=out of sight). A rustic poet, Clare (like his more famous Scots elder, Robert Burns) was fond of the double-entendre erotic image (this trait runs through every generation of poets, and the best of them, like Robert Frost, hide it beneath other layers of significance). Thus, the sensual: "And dewdrops pearl the evening breast," The sexual awakening: "The evening primrose opes anew," and, among others, the impotent: "it faints and withers and is gone." This is meant in NO way to demean, debase (or deflower?) Clare's poetry but is offered as a legitimate reading of the poetic images. I don't think Britten was conscious of these images in his setting. His setting reflects a tuning to the images of the flower as sensitive, ephemeral soul (like the creative work and the creative artist). The song alternates between exquisitely harmonized homophonic phrases, and brief oscillating lines in canon. The only extroverted moment in this beautiful miniature comes at the lines "Thus it blooms on while night is by;/When day looks out with open eye," and thus resembles that late blaze of glory before sunset, the last surge of life before death, as the poem concludes:
"Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,/It faints and withers and is gone."
As I was sharing with the singers following a rehearsal earlier this week, one of the traits that sets Britten apart from other vocal/choral composers is his facile and refined use of instrumental textures to shape his writing for voices. The most obvious example in the Flower Songs is the closing "Ballad of Green Broom" in which an anonymous poem is set like a folksong with guitar accompaniment. The melody is passed from voice to voice, while the other 3 accompanying voices sing short words that sound like plucked or strum guitar chords (in every varying arrangements, to accommodate the shifting voice of the melody--Tenor/SAB; Bass/SAT; etc). The poem is a ballad about a lazy young man--"without thought, without good" who is finally roused from lethargy to go to work as a woodsman--"cutting broom"-- and on his way passes by a Lady's "fine house" who calls for him to come and marry "a lady in full bloom"--seeing a way out of his labor "Johnny gave his consent/and to church they both went."
As the narrative picks up momentum, so does the tempo, and Britten varies the accompanying figures, building to a pair of dizzying duets where the voices literally chase one another (B/T followed by A/S). This tumbling section leads to a climactic verse where all 4 voices come together for the only time in the piece, an accomplished gesture that is punctuated with a virtuosic tag on the recurring emblematic phrase "green Broom."
Even when Britten is not emulating specifically instrumental techniques in his choral works, his use of texture is imaginative and varied. For example, the opening Flower Song, a bright arrangement of Robert Herrick's "To Daffodils" conjures the image of flowers blowing in the breeze. Paired voices frame the piece (S/B & A/T) in a charming duet. The middle section features the upper three voices in staccato chords (like offstage brass) while the basses pick up the melody from the opening soprano line under which they originally harmonized. The gently churning rhythm, the subtly shifting harmonies and textures mirror the poetic subject: flowers that "haste away so soon."
The second Herrick setting, "The Succession of the Four Sweet Months" echoes the Renaissance madrigal text perfectly. The four months, April-July, are taken up by the four voices in a classic miniature of imitative polyphony, as befitting its madrigalesque subject. Britten finishes this song with a succinct demonstration of his craftsmanship: a five bar codetta featuring each part with its respective month (S=April, A=May, T=June, B=July), the S & B outlining the home-key, while the inner voices flirt with a harmonic modulation unpredictable enough to pique our interest to the final resolution.
The middle two works are the heart of this cycle, and feature two poets dear to Britten. George Crabbe lived on the same street in Aldeburgh Britten and Pears eventually would. Aldeburgh is an unforgettable place. A tiny sea-side town on the east coast of England, just far enough up to feel the chill of the North Sea in all but the warmest months, it is surrounded by marshes and wetlands which lend it a special aura and fill it with memorable aromas. Aldeburgh has amazing fish and chips, which are best enjoyed sitting on the shingle as the imposing tide that inspired so much of Britten's music crashes at your feet. Crabbe wrote a book-length poem called The Borough, and it would inspire Britten's first opera, Peter Grimes, which catapulted the barely 30-year-old composer to fame. Peter Grimes is an outcast--a loner, a dreamer, a melancholy & troubled man who struggles in professional and personal life, to put it blandly. Britten and Pears identified with the loner & dreamer outcast in Grimes. His struggle between good and evil, innocence and corruption would parallel a leitmotif that would weave through Britten's work, culminating in his last opera, Death in Venice.
That is all to say the juxtaposition of Crabbe's "Marsh Flowers" with the mad, outcast, "peasant poet" John Clare's "Evening Primrose" is significant, and requires our attention. Never mind that Britten, a copious letter reader and writer and chronicler of his whereabouts and goings on where his and Pears' life and work were concerned did not even mention the Flower songs until AFTER they were completed (and this is unusual). And even then he did not have much to say about them, other than drawing an inquiring conductor's attention to the connection between "Marsh Flowers" and Peter Grimes! So, I find it telling that the harsh, acerbic world of the miniature masterpiece that is "Marsh Flowers" comes from the same source that inspired the first of Britten's intensely personal dozen-or-so operas. The Borough (=Aldeburgh--ie: a small town filled with, among other things, gossip...familiar, anyone?!?) represents the judgmental, closed, hypocritical "status quo" against which the artist/outsider/outcast struggles. "Marsh Flowers" ostensibly chronicles some of the more unpleasant flora in the salt-marsh and sea-side town, but it is a short leap to the metaphor comparing the "poisoned stings" of the "fiery nettle" to the harsh treatment from small-town opprobrium. Britten sets paired voice against one another (this time S/T and A/B) and the angular descriptors of the flora are exchanged in sinewy lines with short, dissonant stings. Britten sets the pairs in contrary motion so that crossing melodies mean crossing harmonies, peppered with mixed thirds (ie: a & a# simultaneously). The "fiery nettle" is set with a dramatic portamento (slide) up the octave for all four voices, and its "poison'd stings" painted with a texture that performs the poetic image with twisted melodies, harmony and rhythm. A double canon (T imitating S, B following A) mirrors the image of the fern growing "in ev'ry chink." The wind-tossed seaweed inspires another colorful bit of word-painting, as the paired voices sing their dissonant duet in contrary motion so they are literally "rolling up and down."
John Clare was a younger contemporary of Crabbe and one of the greatest of England's unschooled poets. Like another Britten muse, Christopher Smart (poet of "Rejoice in the Lamb" and source of my cat Jeoffry's name), Clare was institutionalized for madness. Or what is known today as bipolar disorder. So, another melancholy and troubled artist, another outcast & loner, and another muse. "Evening Primrose" is the beautiful heart of the cycle, an intimate, shimmering part-song about a delicate flower that blooms once, and only at night (=out of sight). A rustic poet, Clare (like his more famous Scots elder, Robert Burns) was fond of the double-entendre erotic image (this trait runs through every generation of poets, and the best of them, like Robert Frost, hide it beneath other layers of significance). Thus, the sensual: "And dewdrops pearl the evening breast," The sexual awakening: "The evening primrose opes anew," and, among others, the impotent: "it faints and withers and is gone." This is meant in NO way to demean, debase (or deflower?) Clare's poetry but is offered as a legitimate reading of the poetic images. I don't think Britten was conscious of these images in his setting. His setting reflects a tuning to the images of the flower as sensitive, ephemeral soul (like the creative work and the creative artist). The song alternates between exquisitely harmonized homophonic phrases, and brief oscillating lines in canon. The only extroverted moment in this beautiful miniature comes at the lines "Thus it blooms on while night is by;/When day looks out with open eye," and thus resembles that late blaze of glory before sunset, the last surge of life before death, as the poem concludes:
"Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,/It faints and withers and is gone."
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