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WAVES OF POETRY
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2018 at 7:00pm SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2018 at 2:30pm BROADMOOR COMMUNITY CHURCH 315 Lake Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH 16 E Platte Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Pre-concert talk begins 45 minutes prior to the performance with George Preston, General Manager, KCME 88.7FM Eapen Leubner tenor Michael Yopp horn Guest artist sponsorships available Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Divertimento No. 11 in D Major, K. 251 Benjamin Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, op. 31 Claude Debussy La Mer (chamber orchestration by Marlijn Helder) |
PROGRAM NOTES BY MARK ARNEST
Overview: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria
Work Composed: 1776
Why It Matters: Well, it doesn’t, at least not much, but it’s a fine instance of the charming and delightful music Mozart could produce at a moment’s notice.
Following a childhood that’s the stuff of musical legend, Mozart had a difficult transition to adulthood. In his late teens he found himself unhappy in Salzburg, where his employer, the Archbishop Colloredo, enjoyed showing Mozart off but actively opposed the direction his compositions were taking. A 1773 visit to Vienna failed in its purpose of finding the young composer a court position (he was actually more successful following his permanent move in 1781, the subject of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus), as was a subsequent stay in Munich. So in March 1775, Mozart and his father returned to Salzburg, where he would stay until 1777, when – again seeking a new position – he set out on a route that took him to Mannheim, Augsburg, Munich (again), and Paris. Again he failed – and to make matters worse, his first great love affair ended in disappointment, and his mother, who was traveling with him, died. A chastened Mozart returned to Salzburg for the last time in January 1779, but found his position there increasingly intolerable. The situation climaxed at a meeting between Colleredo and Mozart on May 9, 1781, during which, as Mozart recounted in a letter to his father, Colleredo called Mozart a wretch and a scoundrel, and Mozart called Colleredo a cretin and a miserable knave.
Because the archbishop was not a fan of Mozart’s liturgical style, Mozart concentrated on secular works during the years 1775-1777, composing a dozen or so divertimentos and serenades – works designed to be heard at a particular occasion. In June and July of 1776, while the Second Continental Congress engaged in the debate that would result in the Declaration of Independence, Mozart composed no fewer than three of these divertimentos. This, the last of them, was probably composed to celebrate his sister Nannerl’s name-day on July 26.
Mozart was just twenty, and what we today call the Classical style was just a few years old. So it’s not surprising that this is not a fully Classical piece, but contains remnants of the earlier Gallant style – the pleasant, conversational music that was popular during the final years of the Baroque. Like Gallant music, the themes are short and numerous; and it’s rhythmically less sophisticated than Classical music: In particular, the third beat in a four-beat measure may receive the same weight as the first beat, an older trait that disappears in the mature Classical style. Like Gallant music, this divertimento is meant to make its maximum effect the first time it’s heard, without requiring listeners to delve into any depths.
The first movement combines elegance and vivacity. Like Haydn’s sonata forms, the first and second themes are closely linked, although the second theme briefly turns to the minor mode. The first Menuetto’s two themes – minuet and trio – are also related, more subtly than in the first movement.
The main theme of the Andantino third movement suavely covers a two-octave range. It’s a delightful foreshadowing of the mature Mozart. The fourth movement is a second Menuetto, but the form is unusual: It’s a set of variations, with the original theme repeated after each of the three variations. The fifth movement is a jolly Rondeau; the finale is a modest March.
Overview: Benjamin Britten
Born November 22, 1913; died December 4, 1976
Work Composed: 1943
Why It Matters: Britten is beginning the period in his life that will make him the most important British composer of his generation.
In 1943, Benjamin Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, returned from a long stay in America – prolonged, in part, by Britten’s pacifist disinclination to join the British war effort. (He was eventually granted conscientious objector status.) He promptly came down with a case of measles so serious that it required hospitalization. He occupied his time by composing this song cycle – the second cycle composed with Pears’s agile, reedy voice in mind – and working on the libretto of Peter Grimes, his first full-scale opera, and the work that would confirm Britten as a major figure in modern music.
In addition to Pears, Britten had another musician in mind: He had recently met the phenomenal French horn player Dennis Brain. The outer movements are for horn solo, and Britten – perhaps at Brain’s suggestion – calls for the player to avoid the instrument’s valves, and instead play only the instrument’s natural overtones. The results sound unusual to ears accustomed to the more common tempered scale.
The six poems are by six different poets, and each has a markedly different mood. But they are connected by the theme of night, much of which is a sleepless, anxious night. The musical style is typical Britten: flexible, vivid, and obviously modern but not aggressively so. The text setting is not particularly melodic, but Britten is acutely aware of the meaning of the words. Composer Nicholas Maw called Britten “the greatest musical realizer of English.”
Darkness is just descending in Pastoral. Britten sets four of the original ten stanzas, and even in this brief song, Britten’s stylistic range is on display, with two dramatic shifts in mood. His text painting is also evident in such touches as the voice descending along with the chariot going down a hill.
It is dark throughout Nocturne. The poem is an excerpt from Tennyson’s The Princess, which dealt with the then-hot-button issue of women’s education. It begins with the physical echo of a bugle in the hills and ends with a rumination on the psychic echo that one’s life leaves behind. The music features stabbing strings, a horn call, and text painting such as skips in the voice for the word “leaps.” Each stanza is more subdued than the one before, as the piece itself becomes an echo dying away.
In Elegy, the mood is not just dark but impenetrably black. Blake’s brilliant and enigmatic poem The Sick Rose is surrounded by a long introduction and postlude consisting of a grief-laden melody in the French horn, tightly organized around falling half-steps. At the very end, the horn alternates between open and stopped notes, sliding up at the very end to create the three-note motif that will dominate the next song.
This song, Dirge, is based on the anonymous Lyke Wake Dirge of the 15th century. (“Lyke” is an ancient British word for “corpse.”) The song warns the living to be generous to the poor, or we will suffer in the hereafter. A version with a traditional folk melody has become a staple of English folk music groups; it’s also been set by several classical composers, most notably Stravinsky. Britten’s setting is insistent and martial.
Britten sets Jonson’s Hymn – addressed to the moon – as a boisterous scherzo, a modernized version of Mendelssohn’s famously delicate scherzos or Berlioz’s “Queen Mab.” The playfulness shows in the rapidly moving horn part, and in the tenor’s gigantic melisma – several notes on a single syllable – for the word “excellently.”
The final vocal movement, Sonnet, is a setting of Keats’s To Sleep, a plea for rest. Musicologist Arnold Whittall calls Britten’s setting of this poem “quite simply, Britten’s finest achievement up to that date. A great poem is so translated into music that no note seems redundant.” This is music of yearning and warmth, with a radiant ending.
For the final French horn solo – a haunting offstage repeat of the opening – Britten told one player to imagine that he was “playing on the surface of the moon, to create a real loneliness.”
1. Prologue
(solo horn)
2. Pastoral (Charles Cotton, 1630–1687)
The day’s grown old; the fainting sun
Has but a little way to run,
And yet his steeds, with all his skill,
Scarce lug the chariot down the hill.
The shadows now so long do grow,
That brambles like tall cedars show;
Mole hills seem mountains, and the ant
Appears a monstrous elephant.
A very little, little flock
Shades thrice the ground that it would stock;
Whilst the small stripling following them
Appears a mighty Polypheme.
And now on benches all are sat,
In the cool air to sit and chat,
Till Phoebus, dipping in the west,
Shall lead the world the way to rest.
3. Nocturne (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809–1892)
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory:
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Bugle blow; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
4. Elegy (William Blake, 1757–1827)
O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
5. Dirge (Lyke Wake Dirge, Anonymous, 15th century)
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle‑lighte,
AnChriste receive thy saule.
When thou from hence away art past,
Every nighte and alle,
To Whinny‑muir thou com’st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
Every nighte and alle,
Sit thee down and put them on;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If hosen and shoon thou ne’er gav’st nane
Every nighte and alle,
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane;
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Whinny‑muir when thou may’st pass,
Every nighte and alle,
To Brig o’ Dread thou com'st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Brig o’ Dread when thou may'st pass,
Every nighte and alle,
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
Every nighte and alle,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If meat or drink thou ne’er gav'st nane,
Every nighte and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
And Christe receive thy saule.
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle‑lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.
6. Hymn (Ben Jonson, 1572–1637)
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heav’n to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wishèd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short so-ever:
Thou that mak’st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
7. Sonnet (John Keats, 1795–1821)
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom‑pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes.
Or wait the “Amen” ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,–
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd Casket of my Soul.
8. Epilogue
(solo horn – off stage)
Overview: Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; died March 25, 1918, Paris, France
Work Composed: 1903-1905, revised 1909
Why It Matters: This is one of the most influential pieces by one of the 20th Century’s most influential composers.
The brilliant 1902 premiere of Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande established him as one of the era’s leading modernists. The work, according to the Times of London, “provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those of Richard Strauss.”
The following year Debussy began composing La Mer, although typically for him, the work would require a long time to reach its final form. Debussy hedged his bets a little: At a time when the symphony was a very prestigious form, he deliberately avoided that word, instead designating it as “three symphonic sketches.” Occasionally he would refer to the piece as a symphony, and it certainly has symphonic elements: an impressive first movement, a scherzo-like second movement, and an almost Romantic finale, complete with a lyrical second theme, its big climax placed near the end, and a fast coda.
But it is equally unsymphony-like. The movements, while thematically related, don’t necessarily form a large-scale structure. The first movement, for instance, is open ended and could be regarded as an introduction to what follows, except that it’s far too large for that. And the free form structures of the first two movements are more reminiscent of Lisztian symphonic poems – another association Debussy was eager to avoid – than of traditional symphonic forms.
La Mer is also tone painting of the highest order. In The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, Caroline Potter writes that Debussy suggests the ocean “by using a multitude of water figurations that could be classified as musical onomatopoeia: they evoke the sensation of swaying movement of waves and suggest the pitter-patter of falling droplets of spray.”
Whatever La Mer is, it’s unquestionably one of the 20th Century’s orchestral masterpieces, with Debussy at the height of his powers. The phrase structures are suppler and more adventurous than those of Pelléas et Mélisande; the orchestration is subtler. On the one hand it’s a monumental public statement, capital-G Great in the way Beethoven conceived of a symphony; on the other hand, it’s completely a personal statement, as intimate as Debussy’s solo piano piece Claire de lune.
Reflecting its title, “From Dawn to Midday on the Sea,” the first movement gradually grows in strength, achieving its most magnificent moment at the very end. It’s worth paying careful attention to Debussy’s thematic development here: The motifs are evocative and malleable, creating a structure that’s difficult to describe but tightly organized. The composer Erik Satie joked that he “especially liked the part from 10:30 to a quarter of 11.”
The brightly orchestrated second movement, “Play of the Waves,” is a riot of color and motion. The finale, “Dialog of the Wind and the Sea,” is the longest and in some ways the widest ranging of the movements, as Debussy dramatizes the conflict between the elements.
Debussy hated being called an Impressionist, yet it’s difficult to call him anything else. Most of the era’s other prominent modernists – Gustav Mahler, Jan Sibelius, Richard Strauss – developed from a Germanic tradition that harked back to Beethoven via Richard Wagner. Debussy’s musical style is very different: It’s elusive, often irrational, and dreamlike. (Years before composing Pelléas, he wrote to a friend that his ideal opera would be “two associated dreams.”)
His harmonic style is very different from Wagner’s, but the two share a love of ambiguity and a reluctance to let the harmony rest. His mastery of thematic development is equal to Beethoven’s or Wagner’s – like the motifs in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the themes in La Mer mostly derive from a few basic shapes – but Debussy’s goal is very different. Rather than creating a logical and linear Beethovenian structure, Debussy creates dreamscapes that somehow make sense despite their apparent oddities.
Debussy composed La Mer for large orchestra. This new chamber orchestra version, by Dutch composer Marlijn Helder, delivers a leaner, almost Neoclassical Debussy, revealing connections to the composer’s late sonatas.
Overview: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria
Work Composed: 1776
Why It Matters: Well, it doesn’t, at least not much, but it’s a fine instance of the charming and delightful music Mozart could produce at a moment’s notice.
Following a childhood that’s the stuff of musical legend, Mozart had a difficult transition to adulthood. In his late teens he found himself unhappy in Salzburg, where his employer, the Archbishop Colloredo, enjoyed showing Mozart off but actively opposed the direction his compositions were taking. A 1773 visit to Vienna failed in its purpose of finding the young composer a court position (he was actually more successful following his permanent move in 1781, the subject of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus), as was a subsequent stay in Munich. So in March 1775, Mozart and his father returned to Salzburg, where he would stay until 1777, when – again seeking a new position – he set out on a route that took him to Mannheim, Augsburg, Munich (again), and Paris. Again he failed – and to make matters worse, his first great love affair ended in disappointment, and his mother, who was traveling with him, died. A chastened Mozart returned to Salzburg for the last time in January 1779, but found his position there increasingly intolerable. The situation climaxed at a meeting between Colleredo and Mozart on May 9, 1781, during which, as Mozart recounted in a letter to his father, Colleredo called Mozart a wretch and a scoundrel, and Mozart called Colleredo a cretin and a miserable knave.
Because the archbishop was not a fan of Mozart’s liturgical style, Mozart concentrated on secular works during the years 1775-1777, composing a dozen or so divertimentos and serenades – works designed to be heard at a particular occasion. In June and July of 1776, while the Second Continental Congress engaged in the debate that would result in the Declaration of Independence, Mozart composed no fewer than three of these divertimentos. This, the last of them, was probably composed to celebrate his sister Nannerl’s name-day on July 26.
Mozart was just twenty, and what we today call the Classical style was just a few years old. So it’s not surprising that this is not a fully Classical piece, but contains remnants of the earlier Gallant style – the pleasant, conversational music that was popular during the final years of the Baroque. Like Gallant music, the themes are short and numerous; and it’s rhythmically less sophisticated than Classical music: In particular, the third beat in a four-beat measure may receive the same weight as the first beat, an older trait that disappears in the mature Classical style. Like Gallant music, this divertimento is meant to make its maximum effect the first time it’s heard, without requiring listeners to delve into any depths.
The first movement combines elegance and vivacity. Like Haydn’s sonata forms, the first and second themes are closely linked, although the second theme briefly turns to the minor mode. The first Menuetto’s two themes – minuet and trio – are also related, more subtly than in the first movement.
The main theme of the Andantino third movement suavely covers a two-octave range. It’s a delightful foreshadowing of the mature Mozart. The fourth movement is a second Menuetto, but the form is unusual: It’s a set of variations, with the original theme repeated after each of the three variations. The fifth movement is a jolly Rondeau; the finale is a modest March.
Overview: Benjamin Britten
Born November 22, 1913; died December 4, 1976
Work Composed: 1943
Why It Matters: Britten is beginning the period in his life that will make him the most important British composer of his generation.
In 1943, Benjamin Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, returned from a long stay in America – prolonged, in part, by Britten’s pacifist disinclination to join the British war effort. (He was eventually granted conscientious objector status.) He promptly came down with a case of measles so serious that it required hospitalization. He occupied his time by composing this song cycle – the second cycle composed with Pears’s agile, reedy voice in mind – and working on the libretto of Peter Grimes, his first full-scale opera, and the work that would confirm Britten as a major figure in modern music.
In addition to Pears, Britten had another musician in mind: He had recently met the phenomenal French horn player Dennis Brain. The outer movements are for horn solo, and Britten – perhaps at Brain’s suggestion – calls for the player to avoid the instrument’s valves, and instead play only the instrument’s natural overtones. The results sound unusual to ears accustomed to the more common tempered scale.
The six poems are by six different poets, and each has a markedly different mood. But they are connected by the theme of night, much of which is a sleepless, anxious night. The musical style is typical Britten: flexible, vivid, and obviously modern but not aggressively so. The text setting is not particularly melodic, but Britten is acutely aware of the meaning of the words. Composer Nicholas Maw called Britten “the greatest musical realizer of English.”
Darkness is just descending in Pastoral. Britten sets four of the original ten stanzas, and even in this brief song, Britten’s stylistic range is on display, with two dramatic shifts in mood. His text painting is also evident in such touches as the voice descending along with the chariot going down a hill.
It is dark throughout Nocturne. The poem is an excerpt from Tennyson’s The Princess, which dealt with the then-hot-button issue of women’s education. It begins with the physical echo of a bugle in the hills and ends with a rumination on the psychic echo that one’s life leaves behind. The music features stabbing strings, a horn call, and text painting such as skips in the voice for the word “leaps.” Each stanza is more subdued than the one before, as the piece itself becomes an echo dying away.
In Elegy, the mood is not just dark but impenetrably black. Blake’s brilliant and enigmatic poem The Sick Rose is surrounded by a long introduction and postlude consisting of a grief-laden melody in the French horn, tightly organized around falling half-steps. At the very end, the horn alternates between open and stopped notes, sliding up at the very end to create the three-note motif that will dominate the next song.
This song, Dirge, is based on the anonymous Lyke Wake Dirge of the 15th century. (“Lyke” is an ancient British word for “corpse.”) The song warns the living to be generous to the poor, or we will suffer in the hereafter. A version with a traditional folk melody has become a staple of English folk music groups; it’s also been set by several classical composers, most notably Stravinsky. Britten’s setting is insistent and martial.
Britten sets Jonson’s Hymn – addressed to the moon – as a boisterous scherzo, a modernized version of Mendelssohn’s famously delicate scherzos or Berlioz’s “Queen Mab.” The playfulness shows in the rapidly moving horn part, and in the tenor’s gigantic melisma – several notes on a single syllable – for the word “excellently.”
The final vocal movement, Sonnet, is a setting of Keats’s To Sleep, a plea for rest. Musicologist Arnold Whittall calls Britten’s setting of this poem “quite simply, Britten’s finest achievement up to that date. A great poem is so translated into music that no note seems redundant.” This is music of yearning and warmth, with a radiant ending.
For the final French horn solo – a haunting offstage repeat of the opening – Britten told one player to imagine that he was “playing on the surface of the moon, to create a real loneliness.”
1. Prologue
(solo horn)
2. Pastoral (Charles Cotton, 1630–1687)
The day’s grown old; the fainting sun
Has but a little way to run,
And yet his steeds, with all his skill,
Scarce lug the chariot down the hill.
The shadows now so long do grow,
That brambles like tall cedars show;
Mole hills seem mountains, and the ant
Appears a monstrous elephant.
A very little, little flock
Shades thrice the ground that it would stock;
Whilst the small stripling following them
Appears a mighty Polypheme.
And now on benches all are sat,
In the cool air to sit and chat,
Till Phoebus, dipping in the west,
Shall lead the world the way to rest.
3. Nocturne (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809–1892)
The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory:
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Bugle blow; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
4. Elegy (William Blake, 1757–1827)
O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
5. Dirge (Lyke Wake Dirge, Anonymous, 15th century)
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle‑lighte,
AnChriste receive thy saule.
When thou from hence away art past,
Every nighte and alle,
To Whinny‑muir thou com’st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
Every nighte and alle,
Sit thee down and put them on;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If hosen and shoon thou ne’er gav’st nane
Every nighte and alle,
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane;
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Whinny‑muir when thou may’st pass,
Every nighte and alle,
To Brig o’ Dread thou com'st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.
From Brig o’ Dread when thou may'st pass,
Every nighte and alle,
To Purgatory fire thou com'st at last;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
Every nighte and alle,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
And Christe receive thy saule.
If meat or drink thou ne’er gav'st nane,
Every nighte and alle,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
And Christe receive thy saule.
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle‑lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.
6. Hymn (Ben Jonson, 1572–1637)
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia’s shining orb was made
Heav’n to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wishèd sight,
Goddess excellently bright.
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short so-ever:
Thou that mak’st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.
7. Sonnet (John Keats, 1795–1821)
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom‑pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes.
Or wait the “Amen” ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,–
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd Casket of my Soul.
8. Epilogue
(solo horn – off stage)
Overview: Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; died March 25, 1918, Paris, France
Work Composed: 1903-1905, revised 1909
Why It Matters: This is one of the most influential pieces by one of the 20th Century’s most influential composers.
The brilliant 1902 premiere of Claude Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande established him as one of the era’s leading modernists. The work, according to the Times of London, “provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those of Richard Strauss.”
The following year Debussy began composing La Mer, although typically for him, the work would require a long time to reach its final form. Debussy hedged his bets a little: At a time when the symphony was a very prestigious form, he deliberately avoided that word, instead designating it as “three symphonic sketches.” Occasionally he would refer to the piece as a symphony, and it certainly has symphonic elements: an impressive first movement, a scherzo-like second movement, and an almost Romantic finale, complete with a lyrical second theme, its big climax placed near the end, and a fast coda.
But it is equally unsymphony-like. The movements, while thematically related, don’t necessarily form a large-scale structure. The first movement, for instance, is open ended and could be regarded as an introduction to what follows, except that it’s far too large for that. And the free form structures of the first two movements are more reminiscent of Lisztian symphonic poems – another association Debussy was eager to avoid – than of traditional symphonic forms.
La Mer is also tone painting of the highest order. In The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, Caroline Potter writes that Debussy suggests the ocean “by using a multitude of water figurations that could be classified as musical onomatopoeia: they evoke the sensation of swaying movement of waves and suggest the pitter-patter of falling droplets of spray.”
Whatever La Mer is, it’s unquestionably one of the 20th Century’s orchestral masterpieces, with Debussy at the height of his powers. The phrase structures are suppler and more adventurous than those of Pelléas et Mélisande; the orchestration is subtler. On the one hand it’s a monumental public statement, capital-G Great in the way Beethoven conceived of a symphony; on the other hand, it’s completely a personal statement, as intimate as Debussy’s solo piano piece Claire de lune.
Reflecting its title, “From Dawn to Midday on the Sea,” the first movement gradually grows in strength, achieving its most magnificent moment at the very end. It’s worth paying careful attention to Debussy’s thematic development here: The motifs are evocative and malleable, creating a structure that’s difficult to describe but tightly organized. The composer Erik Satie joked that he “especially liked the part from 10:30 to a quarter of 11.”
The brightly orchestrated second movement, “Play of the Waves,” is a riot of color and motion. The finale, “Dialog of the Wind and the Sea,” is the longest and in some ways the widest ranging of the movements, as Debussy dramatizes the conflict between the elements.
Debussy hated being called an Impressionist, yet it’s difficult to call him anything else. Most of the era’s other prominent modernists – Gustav Mahler, Jan Sibelius, Richard Strauss – developed from a Germanic tradition that harked back to Beethoven via Richard Wagner. Debussy’s musical style is very different: It’s elusive, often irrational, and dreamlike. (Years before composing Pelléas, he wrote to a friend that his ideal opera would be “two associated dreams.”)
His harmonic style is very different from Wagner’s, but the two share a love of ambiguity and a reluctance to let the harmony rest. His mastery of thematic development is equal to Beethoven’s or Wagner’s – like the motifs in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the themes in La Mer mostly derive from a few basic shapes – but Debussy’s goal is very different. Rather than creating a logical and linear Beethovenian structure, Debussy creates dreamscapes that somehow make sense despite their apparent oddities.
Debussy composed La Mer for large orchestra. This new chamber orchestra version, by Dutch composer Marlijn Helder, delivers a leaner, almost Neoclassical Debussy, revealing connections to the composer’s late sonatas.