Download Report

Discovery
ELLIOT MADORE, baritone
Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 8 pm
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Belsazar, Op. 57 (1840)
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Liederkreis, Op. 39 (1840)
In der Fremde
Intermezzo
Waldesgespräch
Die Stille
Mondnacht
Schöne Fremde
Auf einer Burg
In der Fremde
Wehmut
Zwielicht
Im Walde
Frühlingsnacht
FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963)
Banalités FP107 (1940)
Chanson d’Orkenise
Hôtel
Fagnes de Wallonie
Voyage à Paris
Sanglots
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
The Circus Band (1894)
Ich grolle nicht (1899)
The Side Show (1921)
Tom Sails Away (1917)
Memories (1897)
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Belsazar, Op. 57 (1840)
“Oh Clara, what bliss it is to write songs. I can’t tell you how easy it has become for me . . . It is music
of an entirely different kind which doesn’t have to pass through the fingers—far more melodious
and direct.” The year 1840 had begun well for Robert Schumann. In February he wrote these
sentiments to his fiancée Clara Wieck. By May he had completed both Balsazar and the Liederkreis,
Op. 39, the first two works on tonight’s recital. [He had also completed the Heine Liederkreis, Op. 24
and Dichterliebe, again to Heine poems, and many more songs – but another recital, another day!].
Belsazar (Belshazzar) is one of Schumann’s most dramatic ballads. He wrote it in a single day,
February 7, 1840 and gave the song its own opus number. It’s the ancient tale from Chapter 5 of The
Book of Daniel and Schumann observes the terrifying spectacle, portraying his own emotions,
through both voice and piano, from the song’s opening at midnight in the quiet streets of Babylon.
Meanwhile, King Belshazzar of Babylon and his court feast extravagantly and excessively, soon
becoming drunk. Belshazzar rails against God. “I am the King of Babylon,” he boasts, as the court
falls eerily silent. God’s judgement is written in fire on the wall. The court pass judgement of their
own, as the singer’s voice alone, without piano, tells us as the song concludes.
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Liederkreis, Op. 39 (1840)
These quintessential songs of 19th century German romanticism have the least complicated of titles:
Liederkreis, meaning, simply, ‘song cycle.’ Schumann assembled the 12 settings of the German
romantic poet Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857) in a characteristically intense period in the spring
of 1840. Though the songs lack the through narrative of a Frauenliebe und Leben or the manyfaceted contemplation of a single subject found in the Heine Liederkreis and Dichterliebe, the
Eichendorff settings are nevertheless bound together by cross-references in both subject matter and
music and carefully grouped in a structure of Schumann’s making. 1840 was a year in which
Schumann focussed much of his creativity on song, all against the backdrop of court rulings on his
desired marriage to Clara Wieck. “I have been composing so much . . . I cannot help it and should
really like to sing myself to death, like a nightingale,” he wrote in May, while composing the
Eichendorff Liederkreis. Still composing songs in November, he said: “It’s difficult to stop.” He had
passed the one hundred mark.
Liederkreis opens on an uneasy note [In der Fremde (In a distant land)]. An alienated wanderer in a
distant land contemplates death of both family and, eventually, self. The guitar-like accompaniment
mirrors the original context of Eichendorff’s fictional prose where the singer plays the guitar. Firmly
of the belief that musical and textual coherence in a song cycle could embrace a variety of emotional
moods, Schumann then plunges straight to an ecstatic, yearning declaration of love, [Intermezzo].
The subtlety of the piano writing anticipates that of the Dichterliebe Schumann was write later that
year. Pursuing favourite themes of German romanticism, Waldesgespräch (A forest dialogue) brings
together the forest, night-time, a knight, the Rhine and its siren, the Lorelei. Die Stille (Silence) is
more inward-looking and intimate: a young girl’s breathless, secretive confession of love, perfectly
reflected in the restless piano accompaniment. In one of his finest songs, the beautifully
understated Mondnacht (Moonlight), Schumann portrays the wedding of earth and sky as a
metaphor for human love – his own love – and, in so doing, clearly spells out the word Ehe
(Marriage) in the piano’s left-hand. Schöne Fremde (A beautiful, distant land) pursues the nocturnal
imagery, quivering with emotion and the anticipation of love. Auf einer Burg (In a castle) depicts an
ancient, seemingly timeless castle and its old knight with music that echoes renaissance polyphony
and the old church modes. In der Fremde II (In a distant land II) combines distant memories of love
with memories of the beloved, now long-since dead (as we only find out in the final line). The song’s
underlying restlessness finds further expression in the deep sorrow of Wehmut (Sadness) and turns
to mistrust and even cynicism in the dark forests of Zwielicht (Twilight). A recollection of a cheerful
wedding party opens Im Walde (In the forest). But memories give way to fear as night falls in the
forest. The cycle ends on a joyous note with Frühlingsnacht (Spring night) and love in the air. “The
Eichendorff cycle must be my most romantic and it contains much of you in it,” Schumann wrote to
Clara.
FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963)
Banalités FP107 (1940)
Despite a large catalogue of almost 150 mélodies, Poulenc admitted to being ‘horriblement snob’ in
his choice of poets. In Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), the fastidious Poulenc recognised a
kindred spirit, at once melancholy and joyful. He turned to the Parisian poet throughout his career,
after first recognising a bond between their outlooks on life at the age of 13. Later, he was to write
his first song cycle, Le bestaire, to terse poems by Apollinaire. The five songs of the Banalités
(Banalities) are drawn from a somewhat larger collection which Apollinaire published in 1914.
Poulenc wrote them in October and November 1940, in Paris and Noizay, his homes in the city and in
the country, the Loire valley. The first, Chanson d’Orkenise (Song of Orkenise), is a droll tale of love
lost and love sought within the walls of a rural town. Poulenc instructs that it is to be sung in the
style of a popular song. The location then moves from country to town and the mood from the
straight-ahead to the rather more complex. In the Banalités, Poulenc said, “I tried, using the
inspiration of Matisse’s drawings, to go from complex things to a simple line.” The lazy waltz of
Hôtel (Hotel) now evokes indolence in a Montparnasse hotel room, where smoking a cigarette
trumps work. But the room becomes a cage for the workaholic Poulenc. “I don’t want to work – I
want to smoke.” Behind a fast-flowing exterior, Fagnes de Wallonie (Walloon Moorlands), conceals
the suffering borne by the poet’s traveller. It also conceals considerable craft from the composer
who shapes the entire song to be sung in a single dash. In complete contrast, Voyage à Paris
(Journey to Paris) gleefully presents an ode to the French capital in the style of Maurice Chevalier.
“Paris often brings tears to my eyes and music to my ears,” Poulenc once wrote. Sanglots (Sobs) is
the longest of the five songs and the most profound. In this moving song, Poulenc embraces
Apollinaire’s heartfelt reflection on the tragedy of love throughout the ages.
CHARLES IVES (1874-1954)
The Circus Band (1894)
Ich grolle nicht (1899)
The Side Show (1921)
Tom Sails Away (1917)
Memories (1897)
Charles Ives wrote many songs, often jotting them down as a journalist might make notes. When he
published his collection of 114 Songs in 1922, he had to admit that not all of them could be sung – so
he made instrumental versions of them. “A song has a few rights, the same as other ordinary
citizens,” he wrote in the preface to the publication. “If it feels like walking along the left hand side
of the street—passing the door of physiology or sitting on the curb, why not let it?” Ever the Yankee
from New England, in his songs, Ives weaves together unlikely sources into an idiosyncratic whole.
They range from the avant-garde to the down-home parlour song. His texts come from a variety of
sources including his own pen, as in The Circus Band. This exuberant, uninhibited evocation of a
passing circus was written when he was 20 and already maverick enough to insert rhythmic
idiosyncrasies and odd harmonies to reflect the passing cacophony. With Ich grolle nicht (I bear no
grudge), Ives turns to Heinrich Heine and to a poem best-known in its setting by Robert Schumann.
“The Song above and some of the other songs were written primarily as studies,” Ives says as a
Footnote to Ich grolle nicht in the first printing of the 114 Songs. “Neither Schumann nor Brahms
nor [Robert] Franz would be the one to suffer by comparison.”
At the other end of the spectrum, both Ives’s text and music to The Side Show is a variant on a
popular song from 1883 by Pat Rooney, Sr. There’s even a snippet of Tchaikovsky at the mention of
a Russian dance in this brief song. The moving World War One song Tom Sails Away begins and ends
with the words ‘Scenes from my childhood.’ The music between builds to a climax which includes
fragments and bugle calls from a popular song of the time titled Over There. The final song,
Memories, provides two-memories-in-one. Its first section is marked ‘Very Pleasant’ and captures a
young child’s feeling of breathless anticipation before the curtain rises in an opera house. The
second is a sentimental memory of an uncle humming a favourite memory.
— Notes © 2015 Keith Horner. Comments welcome: khnotes@sympatico.ca