100% Shameless Self-Promotion
Hello Y'all!
Life is still nutso, so postings are yet sparse. But– if you are in the Houston metro area, or can get here relatively easily, here's a plug for my Doctoral Recital! Details:
THIS FRIDAY - OCTOBER 26, 2007
8:30 p.m.
Dudley Recital Hall
Fine Arts Building (behind Blaffer Gallery, across the courtyard from the Moores School Building)
University of Houston - Entrance 16
FREE!
What am I singing, you ask? The recital is titled "Let Evening Come: Songs of the Night." All the songs are, literally or metaphorically, about night. Bolcom's Let Evening Come for soprano, viola and piano opens the program (with Austin Symphony Principal Bruce Williams doing the honors). Rounding out the first half is a Scarlatti Serenata for 2 violoins and continuo called, Hor che di Febo ascosi (Now that the Phoebus has hidden). That one is assisted by Andres Gonzalez and Alan Austin on violin and Valdine Ritchie on cello. The second half starts with a mixed set of French and German art songs that form a narrative about night by Fanny Mendelssohn, Massenet, Debussy, Wolf, Chausson and Richard Strauss. The recital ends with Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 in the composer's piano reduction– artfully played by Keith Weber, who is handling all of the keyboard duties.
If you are really bored, here are my program notes:
Let Evening Come: Songs of the Night is an exploration of the many aspects of night, for night is more than just part of the circadian cycle; more than simply the period during which beings allow their bodies to experience the restorative powers of sleep. In this program we have gathered together works representing these several aspects: The night of the soul in mourning, the night in which uncertainty gives way to acceptance. The night of lovers, both requited and unacknowledged. Night as the backdrop for romantic assignations and for searching: for love, for understanding of one’s innermost self.
Three of the works are stand-alone cantatas/large-form works. For the remaining set, I created a song cycle to tell the night love story I wanted to tell, but could not find in an existing song cycle.
We begin with William Bolcom’s Let Evening Come. Written in 1994, it was commissioned as a duet for Benita Valente and Tatiana Troyanos. When Troyanos unexpectedly died, it was determined that the commission should go forward and a viola part was written in homage to and in stead for the deceased mezzo-soprano. Bolcom selected texts by three dynamic American female poets: Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson and Jane Kenyon. All possess powerful voices expressing in wholly different, yet wholly compatible ways, the experience of life, and loss: literally, the “dark night of the soul.”
The fiery, raw opening motives depict a soul in the deepest throes of grief, parsing the relationship between the life and memory of the departed soul to those left behind. Ultimately, we are reminded, “we can be, and be better, for they existed.” The setting of Dickinson’s poem finds us in a middle place, where grief or fear can paralyze us; trapping us in a place of perpetual night until we are at last persuaded to move on. Bolcom uses a hypnotic ticking motive, reminiscent of a clock-hand ticking off the hours of the night, to great effect in this movement. He follows this movement with an instrumental interlude that ties in the themes from the two prior movements and introduces the theme for the final movement. This third song, the Kenyon poem, brings to a close Bolcom’s exposition of loss and acceptance and exhorts us to embrace all of the things that happen in the night; as “God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.”
Once invited into this nightscape, we turn to the unrequited lover, a staple character of the Serenata (night song), and of night songs and stories of all kinds. In Scarlatti’s Hor che di Febo ascosi the unnamed lover watches night fall and his sleeping beloved. Talking to the night he says all of the things he wishes he could say to his lover during the day, but does not. Scarlatti’s swain seeks refuge in the night, praising its powers of concealment, but ultimately choosing to remain undeclared, telling the beloved, “Sleep… in peaceful oblivion. Let your splendor sleep, for I am leaving.”
This cantata is but one of the hundreds Scarlatti composed. Apparently dating from 1704, it is part of his Roman repertory, which includes a number of Serenatas on pastoral themes similar to this one. One interesting feature is the progressive deconstruction of its formal structure. After two standard da capo arias, Scarlatti closes the work with two through-composed arias. The first of these emerges from an arioso, rather than a strict recitative, which itself proceeds from an instrumental ritornello ending the previous aria. Finally, listen carefully for the ending of the cantata, which Scarlatti treats quite literally; perhaps providing inspiration for later works, such as Haydn’s Farewell Symphony.
Leaving behind the scene of a lover languishing in the night, we observe the course of happy love in the night. Or do we? In six songs, essentially tracing an arc through the second half of the nineteenth century, we see the lover out in the night searching (Nachtwandrer), finding and wooing a suitable partner (Nuit d’Espagne), consummating the affair (Aimons-nous et dormons), marveling at the wonder of true love (Heut’ Nacht erhob ich mich), reveling in the maturation of the affair (Cantique á l’Épouse), and finally, fearing the loss of the loved one in the night (Nacht).
These songs share the ethos of the period, conjuring images of nature to express deep feeling. Here too, we see the various guises of the night: a time of potential and possibility, a place of concealment, a covering of safety, a place of repose and a dangerous place where loss lurks behind every shadow. It is interesting to note that while there is a definite undercurrent of languor in the songs of this “cycle,” it is offset, often simultaneously, by a sense of movement or change. For example in the Debussy, the relatively slow (sometimes static) harmonic motion is overlaid with a near constant sixteenth note motive. In the Chausson, the languid affect is almost usurped by the constantly shifting harmonies.
Our last night journey takes us into the labyrinth of memory. Barber’s Knoxville is a beloved work in the soprano repertoire. On its surface, the night in question here is literal, “It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently.” After the first two sections of the piece, however, it becomes clear that these pleasant twilit memories also unearth something darker and more painful, something more akin to the dead of night.
Though not explicitly expressed, the author (and by extension, the composer) is working his way up to and through the processing of a huge loss—his father’s death. The text is from James Agee’s autobiographical novel, in which his father is struck and killed by a car one evening. In the interludes, Barber deftly foreshadows the event, which is ultimately realized in the narrator’s prayer for God to “bless my people… now, and in the hour of their taking away.” Knoxville was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber, but also touched Barber deeply, as he lost his own father while composing it.
The end of Knoxville, and indeed, of our night voyage, brings us back full circle. Musically, Barber comes back to the material of the beginning as the narrator describes being put to bed by his family. What follows however, returns us to the beginning of our evening, to the place where realization and loss meet: in broad musical strokes, the narrator laments that no matter how “familiar and well-beloved” he is, these people about whom he has reminisced, and for whom he still mourns, “will not, not now, not ever, but will not ever tell me who I am.”
Life is still nutso, so postings are yet sparse. But– if you are in the Houston metro area, or can get here relatively easily, here's a plug for my Doctoral Recital! Details:
THIS FRIDAY - OCTOBER 26, 2007
8:30 p.m.
Dudley Recital Hall
Fine Arts Building (behind Blaffer Gallery, across the courtyard from the Moores School Building)
University of Houston - Entrance 16
FREE!
What am I singing, you ask? The recital is titled "Let Evening Come: Songs of the Night." All the songs are, literally or metaphorically, about night. Bolcom's Let Evening Come for soprano, viola and piano opens the program (with Austin Symphony Principal Bruce Williams doing the honors). Rounding out the first half is a Scarlatti Serenata for 2 violoins and continuo called, Hor che di Febo ascosi (Now that the Phoebus has hidden). That one is assisted by Andres Gonzalez and Alan Austin on violin and Valdine Ritchie on cello. The second half starts with a mixed set of French and German art songs that form a narrative about night by Fanny Mendelssohn, Massenet, Debussy, Wolf, Chausson and Richard Strauss. The recital ends with Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 in the composer's piano reduction– artfully played by Keith Weber, who is handling all of the keyboard duties.
If you are really bored, here are my program notes:
Let Evening Come: Songs of the Night is an exploration of the many aspects of night, for night is more than just part of the circadian cycle; more than simply the period during which beings allow their bodies to experience the restorative powers of sleep. In this program we have gathered together works representing these several aspects: The night of the soul in mourning, the night in which uncertainty gives way to acceptance. The night of lovers, both requited and unacknowledged. Night as the backdrop for romantic assignations and for searching: for love, for understanding of one’s innermost self.
Three of the works are stand-alone cantatas/large-form works. For the remaining set, I created a song cycle to tell the night love story I wanted to tell, but could not find in an existing song cycle.
We begin with William Bolcom’s Let Evening Come. Written in 1994, it was commissioned as a duet for Benita Valente and Tatiana Troyanos. When Troyanos unexpectedly died, it was determined that the commission should go forward and a viola part was written in homage to and in stead for the deceased mezzo-soprano. Bolcom selected texts by three dynamic American female poets: Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson and Jane Kenyon. All possess powerful voices expressing in wholly different, yet wholly compatible ways, the experience of life, and loss: literally, the “dark night of the soul.”
The fiery, raw opening motives depict a soul in the deepest throes of grief, parsing the relationship between the life and memory of the departed soul to those left behind. Ultimately, we are reminded, “we can be, and be better, for they existed.” The setting of Dickinson’s poem finds us in a middle place, where grief or fear can paralyze us; trapping us in a place of perpetual night until we are at last persuaded to move on. Bolcom uses a hypnotic ticking motive, reminiscent of a clock-hand ticking off the hours of the night, to great effect in this movement. He follows this movement with an instrumental interlude that ties in the themes from the two prior movements and introduces the theme for the final movement. This third song, the Kenyon poem, brings to a close Bolcom’s exposition of loss and acceptance and exhorts us to embrace all of the things that happen in the night; as “God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.”
Once invited into this nightscape, we turn to the unrequited lover, a staple character of the Serenata (night song), and of night songs and stories of all kinds. In Scarlatti’s Hor che di Febo ascosi the unnamed lover watches night fall and his sleeping beloved. Talking to the night he says all of the things he wishes he could say to his lover during the day, but does not. Scarlatti’s swain seeks refuge in the night, praising its powers of concealment, but ultimately choosing to remain undeclared, telling the beloved, “Sleep… in peaceful oblivion. Let your splendor sleep, for I am leaving.”
This cantata is but one of the hundreds Scarlatti composed. Apparently dating from 1704, it is part of his Roman repertory, which includes a number of Serenatas on pastoral themes similar to this one. One interesting feature is the progressive deconstruction of its formal structure. After two standard da capo arias, Scarlatti closes the work with two through-composed arias. The first of these emerges from an arioso, rather than a strict recitative, which itself proceeds from an instrumental ritornello ending the previous aria. Finally, listen carefully for the ending of the cantata, which Scarlatti treats quite literally; perhaps providing inspiration for later works, such as Haydn’s Farewell Symphony.
Leaving behind the scene of a lover languishing in the night, we observe the course of happy love in the night. Or do we? In six songs, essentially tracing an arc through the second half of the nineteenth century, we see the lover out in the night searching (Nachtwandrer), finding and wooing a suitable partner (Nuit d’Espagne), consummating the affair (Aimons-nous et dormons), marveling at the wonder of true love (Heut’ Nacht erhob ich mich), reveling in the maturation of the affair (Cantique á l’Épouse), and finally, fearing the loss of the loved one in the night (Nacht).
These songs share the ethos of the period, conjuring images of nature to express deep feeling. Here too, we see the various guises of the night: a time of potential and possibility, a place of concealment, a covering of safety, a place of repose and a dangerous place where loss lurks behind every shadow. It is interesting to note that while there is a definite undercurrent of languor in the songs of this “cycle,” it is offset, often simultaneously, by a sense of movement or change. For example in the Debussy, the relatively slow (sometimes static) harmonic motion is overlaid with a near constant sixteenth note motive. In the Chausson, the languid affect is almost usurped by the constantly shifting harmonies.
Our last night journey takes us into the labyrinth of memory. Barber’s Knoxville is a beloved work in the soprano repertoire. On its surface, the night in question here is literal, “It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently.” After the first two sections of the piece, however, it becomes clear that these pleasant twilit memories also unearth something darker and more painful, something more akin to the dead of night.
Though not explicitly expressed, the author (and by extension, the composer) is working his way up to and through the processing of a huge loss—his father’s death. The text is from James Agee’s autobiographical novel, in which his father is struck and killed by a car one evening. In the interludes, Barber deftly foreshadows the event, which is ultimately realized in the narrator’s prayer for God to “bless my people… now, and in the hour of their taking away.” Knoxville was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber, but also touched Barber deeply, as he lost his own father while composing it.
The end of Knoxville, and indeed, of our night voyage, brings us back full circle. Musically, Barber comes back to the material of the beginning as the narrator describes being put to bed by his family. What follows however, returns us to the beginning of our evening, to the place where realization and loss meet: in broad musical strokes, the narrator laments that no matter how “familiar and well-beloved” he is, these people about whom he has reminisced, and for whom he still mourns, “will not, not now, not ever, but will not ever tell me who I am.”
posted by YankeeHobbit | 11:37 PM
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