字體：小 中 大 |
|
|
|
| 2016/07/30 06:36:56瀏覽214｜回應0｜推薦1 | |
Sowash: "Along the River” for soprano, with flute, clarinet and piano.
Last week I shared a funny story and a pretty good musical composition of moderate length. I hope I’ve earned your indulgence because today I want to share what I consider to be one of my best efforts, a song cycle just over twenty minutes long. It’s the longest piece I’ve yet shared in these emails. Of my 400 works, this is almost the only one that brings tears to my eyes. In the final song, when the singer offers a farewell kiss that comes like a benediction, singing, “My kiss will give peace now and quiet to your heart…” that’s when the lump forms in my throat and the salty sap starts to seep. “Along the River” is a set of seven songs, scored for mezzo, flute, clarinet and piano, connected by instrumental interludes. The cycle tells a sad, beautiful love story. Sad story, beautiful music. A lonely clarinet solo opens the piece with a tender love theme. You might recognize it because I later expanded it into another work, “The View from Carew,” which is both a single-movement chamber work for clarinet, cello and piano and also the middle movement of my concerto for clarinet and orchestra. One of my best themes, it is played by all three instruments at various times throughout “Along the River,” though it never appears in the vocal part. A very long time ago, my girlfriend (who, next month, will have been my wife for 44 years) shared with me a wonderful cycle of poems entitled, “Chamber Music” by James Joyce. Don’t be frightened! This is the young James Joyce, the youthful genius who gave us “Dubliners” and “A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man,” not the later, half-mad literatus who conferred “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake” upon a baffled world. The poems are written from a man’s point of view, yet I have cast them here to be sung by a woman. For me, the woman is reading (singing) the man’s love poems back to him, as if to say, “Listen to yourself! Hear what you sound like! Understand how you come across!” Viewed this way, the poems reveal clues as to why the relationship failed. The woman “explains” this to the man as she says goodbye, using his own words, which are very beautiful and very overwrought. One can see how she grew weary of such an ardent, needy and loquacious lover. What are her feelings? The music itself is the only hint. Her feelings, a mingling of sorrow and relief are implied by the way she sings these poems, the way the words are set to music. The seven poems I chose from “Chamber Music” (which are included at the bottom of this message) tell the story, starting out naively happy, gradually darkening, ending in separation and farewell. Except, not quite! The long piano solo after the soprano finishes her last song, ends the cycle with resignation, yes, but also a wistful radiance. “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” At the very end, the clarinet repeats a fragment of the naively happy 'springtime' theme that begins the cycle, as if to say, “The possibility of Love is always present; Love may come again, even to the broken-hearted.” “Along the River” was written for and is dedicated to mezzo soprano Diane Haslam. You are among the few to have heard this beautiful music; the piece has been performed only about a half dozen times. To hear "Along the River” sung exquisitely and with delicate fervor by Mary Elizabeth Southworth, with flutist Danielle Hundley, clarinetist Marianne Breneman and pianist Phil Amalong (when the four of them perform together, they call their ensemble, “Conundrum,”) click here: http://www.sowash.com/ To see a PDF of the score, click here: http://www.sowash.com/ |
|
| ( 興趣嗜好｜其他 ) |
