Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Samuel Barber, probably best known for his meltingly beautiful Adagio for Strings, also wrote many wonderful works for voice and piano. Among these treasures is the song cycle “Despite and Still”.
On my audio clips page you will find two songs from this cycle recorded live (nothing added, nothing taken away…) with pianist and composer Andrew Wise at a concert featuring our latest recital programme “Classic Meets Cabaret”.
“Solitary Hotel” merits a special mention. It is a setting of prose – not poetry – already an unusual choice. Furthermore, the words come from the extraordinary, highly individual “Ulysses” by James Joyce.
Barber’s interpretation takes a paragraph of Joyce’s brittle prose and, using an imaginative ‘tango’ style, fashions something almost three dimensional that runs like a video clip.
See for yourself. Here is the paragraph by Joyce :
‘Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. Solitary.
What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen’s hotel, Queen’s hotel, Queen’s ho…’
And now listen to Barber’s setting :
[audio:https://penelopeturner.com/wp-content/2008/09/solitary-hotel-by-samuel-barber-live-recording-230408.mp3]
Complete creative freedom leads to a superfluity of possibilities.
- Routine can rout restlessness
- Structure can inspire creativity
- Convention can caste out chaos and formlessness
- Limits can expand horizons
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.” Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music.
Lovers of Renaissance music may like to know that I will be singing music by Carlo Gesualdo with the Laudantes Consort this coming week.
We perform on Thursday, May 22nd, at 20:30 in the Chapelle de Linthout, Ave. des deux Tilleuls 2, 1200 Brussels; on Friday, May 23rd, at 20:00 in the Onze Lieve Vrouw van Fatima church, Bret-Gelieren, Genk 3600.
Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was born around 1560. In his twenties he married his beautiful cousin, whom he stabbed to death four years later along with her lover, the Duke of Andria, having caught them “in flagrante”. Although he remarried, his second liaison was far from happy, and he descended further and further into melancholy until his death in 1613. Only music seems to have been of importance to him. In his works you can hear the torture of his soul.
The six-voice Responsaria that we sing next week are complex and grief-ridden. Composed two years before his death, they were intended for private performance during Holy Week, with Gesualdo alone as the audience. They are written in a highly emotional style. Filled with an incredible concentration of dissonance and chromaticism, the resultant harmonies are often way ahead of the times (there is even a ‘Bruckner moment’!)
Not to be missed.
Merci à tout le monde qui est venu à notre spectacle “Classique et Cabaret” ce mercredi dernier.
J’espère que vous vous êtes amusés autant que Andrew et moi. Pour nous c’était un vrai plaisir de vous accueillir.
A la prochaine fois !
