TALES OF SAILORS, ADVENTURERS AND FISHERS
THE WORLD OVER

Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Programme notes
by Andrea Budgey

Arthur Bliss: Sea Love, poetry by Charlotte Mew
Juliet Hess: The Mariner's Albatross, poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lee Hoiby: Bermudas, poetry by Andrew Marvell
John Ireland: Sea Fever, poetry by John Masefield
Ernest MacMillan: Three French Canadian Sea Songs
John Mitchell: The Ship in Distress, from an English ballad
Peter Sculthorpe: Island Dreaming, text from the peoples of the Torres Straits
William Wallace: The Estranging Sea, poetry by Matthew Arnold

The title of this evening's programme is taken from a portion of Psalm 107:

They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business on the great waters;
These men see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
For at his word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the deep:
                their soul melteth away because of the trouble.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end.
So they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivereth them from their distress.
For he maketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still.
Then are they glad, because they are at rest; and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.

Although brief, this vivid excerpt presents us with many of the themes and metaphors explored in the poetry and music of the concert: the mysterious and inexplicable movements of the sea, the danger of tempest, alienation from “normal” human life, and powerlessness in the face of natural and divine forces.

The poets and composers represented in this programme treat the sea in a variety of ways. In Marvell's Bermudas, it is literally a “means to an end”, the practical and poetic connection to the islands of the title. For the Torres Strait islanders whose songs Peter Sculthorpe used in Island Dreaming, of course, the same might be said: the sea is a means of transport and livelihood as well as a matrix of myth. Macmillan's Three French Canadian Sea Songs also come from a genuine connection with the sea, but seen in a markedly different cultural mirror.

In the ballad The Ship in Distress, the hazardous ocean provides a backdrop to the narrative, whereas in The Mariner's Albatross the exterior story is also a reflex of the Mariner's interior, spiritual crisis. Sea Fever treats human ambition and restlessness in a more idealised way. For both Charlotte Mew, whose text Arthur Bliss set in Sea Love, and Matthew Arnold, in Wallace's The Estranging Sea, human isolation and desolation find a larger echo in the implacability of the sea.

The movements of water and the sounds of the sea have long been a favourite for composers to represent in music, and the works on this programme run the gamut of possibilities, from Sculthorpe's crying gulls and Hess' creaking boards, through Hoiby's jig-motifs and wave figures, to Wallace's evocation of large tectonic movements.

Arthur Bliss (1891-1975): Sea Love for voice and violin (1966)

English composer Arthur Bliss, director of music for the BBC during World War II and Master of the Queen's Music from 1953 to 1975, was influenced early in his career by Debussy and Stravinsky, but became more conscientiously nationalist in his subsequent work. The short song Sea Love sets a poem by Charlotte Mew (1869-1928), a little-known poet who was, however, admired by such literary figures as Hardy, Woolf, and Sassoon. It juxtaposes the transitoriness of love with the changelessness of the sea, in language coloured by country dialect. The gentle chromaticism of the vocal line is intensified in the solo violin part, which winds around the vocal line, expanding its small embellishments and creating a somber tone.

Juliet Hess (1979- ): The Mariner's Albatross for tenor, oboe/English horn, clarinet, bassoon, and double bass (2009)

Aside from her work in composition and teaching, Toronto composer Juliet Hess is a freelance percussionist, choral musician, and drummer and dancer in Ghanaian performance groups. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies in critical race theory and its application to world music education.

The Mariner's Albatross uses excerpts from Coleridge's famous poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": dramatic exchanges between the mariner and a wedding guest frame the tragedy of the narrative. Of her compositional process, Hess says

The instrumentation for this piece is oboe/English horn, bassoon, clarinet, and double bass. I see the oboe and English horn as plaintive instruments and I utilize them to invoke Coleridge’s melancholy imagery. The bassoon was actually utilized by Coleridge as part of his wedding music, making it both appropriate and ironic. The sea suggests to me a rolling chromaticism in the bassoon, continued in the treble range by the clarinet, which I also used for its dramatic potential. The double bass invokes a sense of foreboding as well as the creaking floorboards of the ship.

I see the sea as being inextricably linked to chromaticism in music, simply because that is the way I see the waves moving. The metre fluctuates, but emphasizes 3/4, as waves seem to me to suggest movement in three. I have maintained the metre of the poetry because the rhyming scheme is very suggestive of the sea. Maintaining a consistently metric way of telling this sad story is also suggestive of the interminability of the situation in which the Mariner finds himself. There is an intervallic emphasis in this piece on the tri-tone and the minor second to invoke an “otherworldliness”.

Lee Hoiby (1926- ): Bermudas for vocal duet and piano quartet, op 37 (1983)

Lee Hoiby, born in Wisconsin, originally planned a career as a concert pianist, but changed his mind when he was invited to study composition with Gian Carlo Menotti at the Curtis Institute. Menotti’s influence led Hoiby in the direction of opera. His dramatic works have been presented by many North American companies, but he continues to compose in a variety of vocal and instrumental genres.

In the mid-17th century, the islands of Bermuda had a sinister reputation as tempestuous and bewitched. In 1653, Andrew Marvell was living in the home of John Oxenbridge, who had been the leader of a Puritan settlement in Bermuda, and was then part of a commission on the government of the colony. Marvell's poem sings the islands' praises in biblical terms, adopting a high devotional tone while not-so-subtly attempting to rehabilitate Bermuda's reputation in the eyes of potential colonial investors.

Hoiby's setting of Bermudas exists in several versions, as a solo or duet, accompanied either by piano or by piano quartet, and this evening's performance represents the fullest of these possibilities. Although the piece is through-composed, its sections are in contrasted styles. The vocal parts alternate between homophony (declaiming the text simultaneously) and imitative counterpoint, while the accompaniment evokes the movement of the sea without being overtly naturalistic. The brief coda recalls the lively, jig-like figure of the opening, slowed to a more reflective tempo to match the celestial quiet of the poem's conclusion.

John Ireland (1879-1962): Sea Fever for voice and piano (1913)

John Ireland (1879-1962) and John Masefield (1878-1967) were almost exact contemporaries, both versatile and fairly prolific, both deeply English in sensibility. "Sea Fever" was an early work of Masefield's, written when he was twenty-four, and its vision of sea travel seems somewhat romanticised, even for the late Victorian period. Ireland's setting, dating from just before the First World War, does nothing to subvert the poem's tone: it is strophic and modal, with an air of folk-melody, but the accompaniment includes enough chromaticism to ensure that it could be never mistaken for anything less than sophisticated.

Ernest MacMillan (1893-1973): Three French Canadian Sea Songs for voice and string quartet (1930)

Toronto’s most prominent organist, conductor, teacher, and composer of the first half of the 20th century needs little introduction; but while most musical Torontonians recognize his name, fewer are aware that he was also a collector of folk songs, who collaborated with Marius Barbeau during the mid- and late 1920s in the gathering and transcribing of First Nations’ and French-Canadian material. These three settings grew out of that experience. The string quintet accompaniment provides a smooth, almost orchestral support for the voice - MacMillan specified performance by string orchestra as an alternative - without ever overwhelming the melody or the text. The flowing wave-figures of Sept ans sur mer are particularly effective in expressing the inexorable length of a sailor’s stint at sea, while the rhythmic sparkle and polish of À Saint-Malo have made it a concert favourite.

John Mitchell (1946- ): The Ship in Distress for voice, clarinet, and piano (1972/1985)

Largely self-taught as a composer, Mitchell has worked as a pharmacist in Kent, England since 1968. In addition to his own compositions, he is a prolific arranger, and also a pianist. He is currently the rehearsal accompanist for the Canterbury Operatic Society.

The English ballad "The Ship in Distress" exists in a number of versions; each tells the story of the narrow escape from death and cannibalisation by a sailor on a lost and damaged ship. Mitchell's setting is of one of the shorter versions, collected by composer George Butterworth in 1907 from a Mr Harwood, in Sussex, and is particularly interesting for its irregular metre. In Mitchell's arrangement, the clarinet and piano alternate in the role of partner to the voice, otherwise providing atmospheric colour in a little three-act drama of apprehension, tension, and release.

Peter Sculthorpe (1929- ): Island Dreaming for voice and string quartet, from String Quartet No. 13 (1996)

Sculthorpe was born in Tasmania in 1929, and educated in Melbourne and Oxford. He taught at Yale and Sussex before returning to Australia in 1961, and has been called the “spiritual father” of Australian new music. The inspiration for much of his work is drawn from landscape and from Aboriginal culture: he has commented on the need for this focus:

A bogus national identity and its commercialisation have obscured the true breadth of our culture. Perhaps we now need to attune ourselves to this continent, to listen to the cry of the earth, as the Aborigines have done for many thousands of years.

Of his String Quartet No. 13, Sculthorpe writes

This work is based upon ideas suggested by the musics of the Torres Strait Islands. In these islands, the cultures of aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea, as well as Indonesia, are brought together as one; and the mythology is concerned mostly with the sea and with sea-change. The text, sung in its indigenous language, was culled from poetry both modern and archaic.

This work was created for the Brodsky Quartet and Anne Sofie von Otter, and the first performance was given in Paris in 1996. The string parts create an atmosphere in which the vocal line unfolds, underpinned by rolling waves in the lower lines, especially the cello; the expansive lyricism of the work is punctuated by brief “effects”, like the crying of gulls.

William Wallace (1933- ): The Estranging Sea for tenor, English horn, bassoon, cello, and double bass (1984)

Wallace moved from his native United States to Canada in 1967 to teach theory and composition, and later music criticism, at McMaster University. He retired from teaching in 1989 to concentrate on composition. His engaging style is largely tonal, enlivened by the use of octatonic scales and a high degree of rhythmic interest.

Matthew Arnold's “To Marguerite” is a concentrated meditation on estrangement within a relationship, using a central image of islands divided by the sea, nevertheless remembering a former unity before the water's rising. Wallace's setting is more than a song with accompaniment: the instrumental sections are substantial, and as crucial to the overall “meaning” as the text. The dark timbres of the English horn, bassoon, cello, and bass, in an extended introduction, interludes, and coda, establish a tone darker than mere melancholy, and the solitary English horn at the beginning and end creates a sense of profound isolation. The text is set in a declamatory rhythm, but with large melodic arches, and just as the movement of the sea in the poem is more than a mere rising and falling of waves or tide, there is no overt tone-painting of the sound of the sea.