Intimations of Heaven Programme Notes
Songs of love and longing, despair and redemption
Tuesday November 2 & Wednesday November 3, 2010 • 8pm.
Pre-Concert talks at 7:15pm
Programme notes
by Andrea Budgey
FRANZ SCHUBERT (arr. Aribert Reimann): Mignon-Lieder, for voice and string quartet. Text by J.W. von Goethe.
RICHARD WAGNER (arr. John Plant): Wesendonck-Lieder, for voice, and string quartet. Text by Mathilde Wesendonck.
JOCELYN MORLOCK: Trakl-lied, for two voices, viola, double bass, flute and percussion. Text by Georg Trakl and J.W. von Goethe.
FRANZ SCHUBERT: Auf dem Strom, for voice, French horn and piano. Text by Ludwig Rellstab.
GUSTAV MAHLER (arr. Arnold Schoenberg): Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, for voice, string quintet, flute, clarinet, piano, harmonium and percussion. Text by the composer.
The unifying thread of this evening’s programme of music from the German Lieder tradition is spun in the first stanza of the opening song of the Mignon-Lieder: “Only someone who knows longing (Sehnsucht) knows what I suffer. Alone and separated from all joy, I gaze into the heavens.” “Longing” is the usual translation for Sehnsucht, but the word is in reality un-translatable: a compound of sehnen, “to yearn” and Sucht, “addiction,” which encompasses intense craving, nostalgia for an idealized past, grief over lost love and desire for transcendence. Entwined with the suffering implied in this complex of ideas and emotions is a Romantic conviction that the process of longing is also somehow transfiguring, itself a path to the unknown and the longed-for.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Mignon Lieder, arranged for voice and string quartet by Aribert Reimann (b. 1936)
poetry by J.W. Goethe (1749-1832)
Schubert produced an extraordinary number of settings of the poignantly romantic lyrics from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, most of them for solo voice and piano. These lyrics are associated with two characters in the novel, the mad Harfenspieler, or “Harper,” and his fragile, waif-like daughter Mignon.
In 1995, the German composer Aribert Reimann (b.1936) selected three of Schubert’s early Mignon pieces, Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, Heiss mich nicht reden, and So lasst mich scheinen bis ich werde, and “compiled and transcribed” them as a continuous, organically connected mini-cantata for voice and string quartet, which follows Mignon through her longing for an absent lover, passionate secrecy, and anticipation of release in death. The delicate sensitivity of Reimann’s arrangement reflects his extensive experience not only as a composer, but also as a distinguished accompanist of Lieder – most notably in performances with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, for whom many of his original works were written.
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Richard Wagner (1813-1881): Wesendonck Lieder, arranged for voice and string quartet by John Plant (b. 1945)
poetry by Mathilde Wesendonck (1828-1902)
Richard Wagner is, of course, best known as an opera composer, and the Wesendonck Lieder are in many ways operatic in character. They were written in 1857-1858 on texts authored by Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck, one of Wagner's principal benefactors at the time. The passionate friendship between Wagner and Mathilde consoled him in an increasingly unhappy marriage, and is said to have inspired Tristan und Isolde; indeed, two of the Wesendonck songs became studies for passages in the opera. The songs were originally written for voice and piano but are most often heard in Felix Mottl's arrangement for full orchestra.
John Plant was born in Yonkers, New York in 1945 but has been resident in Canada since 1968. Now retired, he taught composition and music history at Concordia University for many years. His music reflects his love of literature, languages and the human voice. Of his transcription of the Wesendonck Lieder he has said that he felt the string quartet was "an ideal medium for conveying the intense intimacy of these songs.”
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Jocelyn Morlock (b. 1969): Trakl-lied, for soprano, mezzo-soprano, flute, viola, double bass and percussion
poetry by Georg Trakl (1887-1914) and J.W. Goethe (1749-1832)
Canadian composer Jocelyn Morlock began her musical studies as a pianist, and received both a Master's and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of British Columbia. Her teachers have included Pat Carrabré, Stephen Chatman, Keith Hamel and Nikolai Korndorf. Morlock has been recognized nationally and internationally, winning a place in the Top 10 at the 2002 International Rostrum of Composers, first prize in the 2003 CMC Prairie Region Emerging Composers competition, and two nominations for Best Classical Composition at the Western Canadian Music Awards in 2006 and 2010. She has been commissioned to compose works for a number of festivals and competitions.
The Trakl-lied, first performed by the Continuum Contemporary Music Ensemble in Toronto in 2004, combines a brief text from Goethe's Wanderers Nachtlied II with a longer lyric by the Austrian Expressionist Georg Trakl (1887-1914). The scoring – for two singers, flute, viola, double bass and two percussionists (playing vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel and crotales) – creates a varied tonal palette which is employed, for the most part sparingly, to animate the fugitive and shadowed world of the text.
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Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Auf dem Strom for voice, French horn and piano
poetry by Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860)
Schubert’s Auf dem Strom was composed for a concert of his own music on March 26, 1828, the first anniversary of Beethoven's death. This was the first public concert to feature music by Schubert only, and it was a financial and popular success. Sadly, Schubert himself died later the same year.
The text, by Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860), reflects on the pain of separation occasioned by death and the hope for an eventual reunion of souls – an apt tribute from one composer to another. The horn participates as an equal partner to the voice with sweeping lyrical phrases. It is possible that this line was intended for performance on the new, valved horn, although it would also have been possible for a talented player like J.R. Lewy, the horn-player in the premiere, to have used a natural horn. The piano accompaniment maintains the constant, not to say relentless, forward movement of the river – so central to the text – with subtle variations of texture and intensity.
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Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, arranged for voice and ten instrumentalists by Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)
poetry by the composer
Mahler’s first song cycle, begun in 1884 and published in 1897, set lyrics of doomed, unrequited love by the composer himself, which were heavily influenced by the folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The cycle exists in versions calling for both piano and orchestral accompaniment. But when Arnold Schoenberg selected Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen for performance by his Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for Private Musical Performance), he re-arranged the orchestral version for the forces at his disposal: flute, clarinet, strings, piano, harmonium and percussion, with the keyboard instruments covering most of the wind and brass parts.
The Society’s evenings, which ran from 1918 to 1923, were select occasions, without publicity, paying audience, applause or reviews. They were intended to present significant works in performances which achieved the “utmost clarity and fulfillment.” The instrumentation of the chamber ensemble allowed for an extraordinary range of colours and textures within the limitations of such intimate private performances.
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