Sibelius's "Oceanides"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Jan Sibelius (1865-1957)

The Oceanides

Portrait of Sibelius in 1892 by his brother-in-law, Eero Järnefelt

In the ‘teens’ of the 20^th century, it was as if Sibelius was seeking in his music to find the Being of nature behind the acoustic surface of his works. This was not ‘easy’ music. In several works of the period, Sibelius himself struggled through various drafts before arriving at satisfactory results. Not surprisingly, much of this music defied classification into standard classical forms and audiences were puzzled by works such as the Fourth Symphony (1910-11) or Luonnotar (1913).

In many respects, The Oceanides signified emergence from the bleak rigour of this period’s music. The work was commissioned in 1913 by philanthropists Carl Stoeckel and his wife, Ellen Battell-Stoeckel, for the next year’s Norfolk Festival in Connecticut. Sibelius wrote a draft in three movements. At this stage it was called ‘Fragments of a suite for orchestra (Precursor to The Oceanides)’; material that wound up in the final work was recognisable in the second movement. Sibelius then wrote a one-movement version in D flat. By now the work was called not only Oceanides, but Aallotaret, ‘water nymphs’, from the Finnish word ‘aalto’, for wave.

In his programmatic works, Sibelius was often inspired by the scenery and mythology of his native far north (particularly as found in the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala), but he could also be inspired by the south. The ‘oceanides’ themselves were found in Homer, feminine spirits of Oceanus, the great river that encircles the earth.

The sea’s shifting shapes and consistency make a good analogue for the form of the work, which in general consists of waves accumulating to a climax. The temptation to look for conventional form might find encouragement in the fact that at one point in May 1914 the work was temporarily called, in German, Rondeau der Wellen (Rondo of the Waves).

The Oceanides is often described as Sibelius’s most impressionistic work, and it is possible that the original three-movement version was an answer to Debussy’s La Mer. Sibelius champion Cecil Gray described the work as ‘pointillist’, a term from painting that has also been applied to Debussy’s work, but any pointillism in Sibelius serves a different purpose. He is interested in what motives amount to, not in limiting our attention impressionistically to the passing moment.

Sibelius’s sea crossing to America to conduct this work in 1914 led to one of the most rewarding experiences of his life. He visited New York, Boston and Niagara Falls (which moved him profoundly). At Norfolk he was thrilled by the quality of the orchestra – musicians from Boston and New York’s Metropolitan Opera – and even wondered if they may not have coped after all with the more mysterious D flat in which he had written the second draft of The Oceanides.

The reception in America was timely. While Central Europe had recently been coming to terms with the tonal experiments of Schoenberg, Richard Strauss and Mahler, Sibelius was falling out of fashion. It must have been gratifying to find a ready reception among people at the far western perimeter of the Central European tradition.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2011


This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013

The Assignation, 7-minute film DRAFT 4 (new ending)

1.INT. KITCHEN. DAY

The kettle is whistling loudly on the stove. LEYLA, heavily pregnant, goes to the fridge, but finds no milk. She goes to her purse but it's empty. She turns off the kettle.

Leyla

(calling out)

          I haven't got any change, hon. Where's your wallet?

2. INT. A BABY'S BEDROOM. DAY

This room is brightly painted on three sides with a feature wall of playful children's wallpaper on one side. It is as yet devoid of furniture, except for a baby's basinette (empty) alongside the wall-papered wall. MITCHELL (in his early 30s) is on a step-ladder hanging a mobile from the ceiling.

MITCHELL

          On the side table.

 Humming happily, he steps down to admire his handiwork. Leyla comes in.

Leyla

(holding a packet of condoms)

          Why would you need these?

MITCHELL

          I wouldn't. Where did you get them?

Leyla rushes at him and starts beating him.

LEYLA

          You bastard. How could you do this to me?

Mitchell skilfully restrains her.

MITCHELL

          Where did you get them?

LEYLA

          From your gym bag, you fucking bastard!

Mitchell runs from the room.

LEYLA

          Don't run away from me!

She collapses in a welter of tears.

3. INT. ADULT bedroom. day

Mitchell bursts into his and Leyla's room and finds a green gym bag sitting open on the bed. He rummages through it and pulls out gym gear he doesn't recognize.

MITCHELL

          Shit!

4. INT. BABY'S BEDROOM. DAY

Leyla, still on the floor, has the handsfree in her hand.

LEYLA

         Mum? He's cheating on me.

We hear a heavy door slam in the background.

5. EXT. STREET/INT. CAR DAY

Mitchell drives. As he approaches the gym he sees CHRISTOPHER and BILL walking away. Christopher carries an identical green gym bag. Mitchell speeds up toward them from behind.

6. EXT. STREET. DAY.

The screech of Mitchell's braking makes Christopher and Bill turn around. Mitchell jumps out of the car. Mitchell has the original green gym bag. He is waving the packet of condoms.

MITCHELL

          Mate, you just got me into a shitload of trouble with my wife.

Christopher barely has time to look down at the green gym bag he is carrying before Mitchell has snatched it out of his hand and swapped his with Christopher's.

MITCHELL

          Didn't you notice it wasn't yours?

BILL

          Didn't you?

Mitchell clenches his fist. Christopher steps between him and Bill, but Mitchell turns instead and storms off.

BILL

(brushing off Christopher's concern)

          Oh, what could he do?

7. EXT. ROAD/INT. CAR. DAY

Mitchell on the phone while driving.

MITCHELL

(anxiously and placatingly)

          No, still on time. I stepped out to get some milk. For Leyla.

8. EXT. STREET. DAY

Mitchell's car momentarily swings out of control, crossing over to the other side of the road, forcing oncoming traffic to slam on brakes and evade, before correcting itself and getting back on the correct side.

9. INT. A BABY'S BEDROOM. DAY

Leyla's face is now muddied with tears and snot. Mum comes back into the room.

MUM

(brandishing a photo)

          Who's this?

Leyla immediately stops crying, grabs the photo.

MUM

          I never liked him, Leyla - I said to your father -

Leyla jumps up and leaves the room.

10. INT. EMBASSY. DAY

Inside the embassy, an attractive dark-haired young woman, ARZU, is shaking hands with two suited EXECUTIVES while a number of hangers-on stand around. At back is the final slide of a Powerpoint presentation depicting a giant pipeline through Asia Minor. An INTERPRETER stands to the far side of Arzu and an executive, PIERCE, who can barely keep his eyes off Arzu.

PIERCE

          If only more negotiations were this easy.

As Arzu turns for the translation, Pierce drops his eyes to her breasts.

INTERPRETER

(translating for Arzu)

          Yalnız daha danışıqlar bu asan olsaydı

11. EXT. EMBASSY/INT. CAR. DAY

Mitchell pulls into a kerb. Across the road is a modern embassy building with a wide stairway leading up to glassed front doors. He turns off the engine and waits. We can hear what he's been listening to.

VOICE ON TAPE

           ...For generations, Kuşköy villagers have conversed using a unique form of whistled
           communication they call “kuş dili,” or “bird language”...

Mitchell pulls a photo of the young woman out of his gym bag.

VOICE ON TAPE

          The name Kuşköy itself means “bird village.”

MITCHELL

(looking at photo)

          Phoar!

12. EXT. STEPS. DAY

The embassy's glass front doors open. Arzu emerges with her translators and Pierce and the two executives.

ARZU

          ...iş görmək sonra, unutmaq olacaq.

INTERPRETER

(to the executives)

           And don't worry about the Kuşköy. Once they see the jobs this project will create, they'll
           forget about being relocated.

13. EXT.STREET. DAY

Mitchell jumps from his car carrying the green gym bag. As he crosses to the other side of the road, a car speeding toward him screeches to a halt. Mitchell freezes in its path and sees Leyla and Mum inside the car.

14. EXT. EMBASSY/ INT. CAR. DAY

LEYLA

          Mitch?

15. EXT. STEPS. DAY

ARZU

(looking at Mitchell's lucky escape, laughing)

          Uğurlu!

Mitchell bounds up the steps toward her, pulls a gun from his gym bag - screaming starts from bystanders - and shoots her. She falls to the ground. The executives try to help, while GUARDS appear from everywhere.

GUARDS

          Dur, qatil!

Mitchell tries to run back down the steps, but is quickly surrounded by guards and FEDERAL POLICE. Guns have appeared from everywhere and are pointing at Mitchell. He drops his weapon.

16. EXT. STREET. DAY

Mum and Leyla are standing on the footpath back from the embassy watching as more guards surround Mitchell and medics arrive from inside the building to form another cluster around the young woman.

GUARDS

          Qatil!

LEYLA

(to mum)

          They're saying 'assassin'.

They watch as Mitchell is picked up, handcuffed, and led away. Mitchell tries to look back at Leyla as he is hustled away.

MITCHELL

          It wasn't my bag!

Leyla looks at the photograph of the young woman she has held in her hand. It is clear now that it is a surveillance photo taken with a telephoto lens.

Back up the road, police cars arrive with flashing lights. We hear an ambulance siren in the distance.

The crowd around the young woman parts slightly and we see medics cutting open her bloodied blouse. Pierce kneels by her head looking on, powerlessly.

17. EXT. STREET. DAY

Mum is walking back to their car, several car lengths up the street, talking on her mobile.

MUM

          And he told you he was just stepping out for milk?

18. EXT. STREET. DAY.

Leyla is still staring after Mitchell.

LEYLA

(to herself)

          Perhaps he isn't a cheat.

She turns and looks up the street at Mum, who, turning, points to the phone and whistles something ornate which is subtitled. 'It's Dad'. Leyla nods and turns back to look in the direction Mitchell was taken in.

ROLL CREDITS

Under the credits we hear a conversation in Kuşköy bird language between a 'fluent speaker' and one who is clearly learning. After a couple of exchanges, the fluent speaker laughs and says "No" - it sounds like Leyla - and corrects the learner's previous sentence. The two continue whistling to each other. The last two exchanges, between the fluent speaker and learner respectively, are subtitled: "Let's stop using condoms." "Time to start a family." "Is there a better way to express our love?"

END.

Please direct all queries to gordon@gordonkaltonwilliams.com

Franz Waxman's "Carmen Fantaisie"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Franz Waxman (1906-1967)

after Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

Carmen Fantaisie

‘Fannie Hurst’s MOST DYNAMIC CHAPTERS SURGE TO Glowing LIFE!’ So said the trailer for the 1946 Warner Bros. movie adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s novel Humoresque. The ‘most vibrant LOVE STORY EVER TOLD’ (to quote again from the trailer), it was meant to dramatise the three-way tug of Paul Boray’s love for music and the women in his life.

Around the time of the Great Depression, Paul (John Garfield), a kid from New York’s East Side, determines to become a violinist despite financial disadvantages. He falls in love with Helen Wright (Joan Crawford), a rich socialite who becomes his patron. But Paul’s mother disapproves of Paul’s neglect of Gina, a girl his own age, and persuades the oft- married Helen that she would only be a bad influence on Paul.

At one stage Helen tries to see Paul, proclaiming good news (her divorce from Victor), but he will not disrupt rehearsal. It is at this point in the plot that he is playing Waxman’s fantasy on themes from Bizet’s Carmen. ‘THE MOST GLORIOUS Music EVER WRITTEN!’ boasted the studio, but whether or not all of it was ‘the most glorious’, this was the period when classical music was part of American popular culture. Not only did the score contain Waxman’s Carmen-fantasy, but Sarasate’s as well, and there was even a reworking of the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The music could be thought to fulfil Hollywood’s idea of romantic music, from its evocation of Bizet’s femme-fatale Carmen to the idea of a Tristaneque ‘love death’. ‘Vibrant love story’? Certainly tragic: Helen ends the film by walking into the ocean, sparing Paul her romantic attention.

The music for the film was arranged and written by Franz Waxman, one of the numerous European émigrés in Hollywood whose late-romantic style suited films during the Golden Years. Waxman had been born in Königshütte and completed music studies in Dresden and Berlin. It was his success in arranging Holländer’s music for The Blue Angel that led him to Los Angeles in 1934. There he scored films such as The Bride of Frankenstein and won Academy Awards two years running for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951). In 1948, he founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival and gave important premieres of works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams and Walton.

The idea of the ‘fantasy’ or ‘paraphrase’ on themes from another work is a phenomenon associated with virtuosos dating back to the 19^th century. Liszt, Chopin and Thalberg, for example, demonstrated their technical brilliance in piano fantasies based on famous operas. Bizet’s Carmen (1875) is, of course, one of the most popular operas of all time. Story-wise, its subject was appropriate to a film about the diverting power of love because in the opera the sergeant of the local barracks, Don José, is distracted to madness and murder by the allure of Carmen. Musically, even the regular audience would recognise their favourite moments – the habañera (Carmen’s ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’) say, or The March of the Toreadors, which opens Waxman’s version.

But was John Garfield a musician of the order of Sarasate, Liszt or Chopin? No, the violin part was originally meant to be played by Jascha Heifitz, another of the great European émigrés to Hollywood (he did record it for vinyl), and was actually played Isaac Stern. They are Stern’s hands on the fingerboard in the film.

Waxman wrote a number of works outside of film that have come to be recognised in latter years, among them the oratorio, Joshua, and The Song of Terezin, a setting of poems by children interned at Theresienstadt concentration camp. But this Carmen Fantasie (whether or not truly ‘SWELLED TO Breathtaking INTENSITY BY Warner Bros.’) is still one of his most frequently-performed works on the concert platform.

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2011

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet.

Happy 4th

Aaron Copland's "A Lincoln Portrait"

Continuing my series of program notes (this one to mark 4 July):

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

A Lincoln Portrait

Alexander Gardner's 1863 portrait

To further the patriotic effort as America entered World War II, conductor André Kostelanetz wrote to a number of American composers requesting musical portraits of significant US national figures which he could include in concert programs. By the early 1940s, Aaron Copland was known as the composer of El salón Mexico and the ballet Billy the Kid. Kostelanetz wrote to Copland eleven days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, suggesting as possible subjects "George Washington, Paul Revere, Walt Whitman, Robert Fulton, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth…"

Fellow composer Virgil Thomson decided to portray Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York and journalist Dorothy Thompson. Copland at first considered portraying the poet Walt Whitman, until he discovered that Jerome Kern was doing Mark Twain, another literary figure. Jefferson was a possibility, but Copland settled on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States who had held the Union together during the Civil War, a period of like crisis.

Virgil Thomson warned Copland about the problem of portraying such a lofty figure. Copland's solution was to employ selections from Lincoln's own speeches. He may have been inspired by Earl Robinson, who in the 1930s had won lessons with Copland from the leftwing Downtown Music School and impressed Copland with a song Old Abe Lincoln which interspersed spoken with sung text. According to biographer Vivien Perlis, Copland wrote to Robinson, "Earl, I’m stealing some of your thunder." But Copland made his own masterly selection from Lincoln's speeches, and brought to it the hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic music which he was beginning to conceive as characteristic of America's plucky and heroic spirit. 1942 would see Copland also compose the iconic Fanfare for the Common Man.

Copland sketched A Lincoln Portrait in February 1942, composed it in mid-April, and completed scoring a few weeks later. The 13-minute work is in three sections, and is strikingly simple. Copland believed in simplicity almost as a Puritan virtue, but he also knew the danger of overstatement in works of this kind. According to Copland’s description given in Perlis’ book Copland: 1900 through 1942, the soft opening is intended to suggest the "mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality [Lincoln was assassinated in Washington’s Ford’s Theatre at the point of victory in the Civil War]…the challenge was to compose something simple, yet interesting enough to fit Lincoln – I kept finding myself back at the C-major triad." The second subject is based on the folksong Springfield Mountain. This leads into a fast section meant to illustrate the colourful times in which Lincoln lived. There is modified use of another folksong, Camptown Races, before the final section which Copland says "was meant to draw a simple but impressive frame around the words of Lincoln himself."

Lincoln is of course famous for the Gettysburg Address and its opening phrase "Four-score and seven years ago…" But you won’t hear that phrase in this work, nor "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal". Copland knew the overwhelmingly resonant potential of Lincoln’s words, and selected passages that the music could complement and build to a climax "that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth." The selections are taken from the seventh of Lincoln’s debates with Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln’s opponent in the 1858 senate campaign (Lincoln lost); a remark made in August that same year; President Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress in 1862, after the battles of Bull Run and Wilson's Creek saw the Southern rebel states on the rise; and the last 67 words from the Gettysburg Address dedicating the Gettysburg battlefield in 1863.

A Lincoln Portrait has become an American work for important national occasions. In America the narrator is usually someone prominent in public life, be it Gen. Schwarzkopf, Katherine Hepburn or Walter Cronkite. Musicologist William Austin voted Ambassador Adlai Stevenson as the Portrait's best speaker, and Stevenson, who knew from those 13 tense days at the UN during the Cold War what it was to coin words in a crisis, allowed Copland’s (and Lincoln’s) eloquence to speak through him. But the work also promoted American values in the world, and in the 1960s the United States Information Agency translated Copland's text into Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese and Hindi (to merely begin the list).

Copland fell foul of authorities during the McCarthy era. A Lincoln Portrait was scheduled to be performed at President Eisenhower's inauguration concert, January 1953. But an Illinois congressman named Fred Busbey objected that Copland had belonged to communist front organisations. A Lincoln Portrait was dropped. Claire Reis of the League of Composers fired off an angry telegram which in estimating Copland's stature just about got it right: "No American composer, living or dead, has done more for American music and the growth of the reputation of American culture throughout the civilized world than Aaron Copland." When the University of Alabama subsequently cancelled one of Copland's speaking engagements Copland wrote to the university in words recalling Lincoln: "It makes clear that freedom of thought is endangered in America if a large university such as yours can be intimidated by the allegations of a single individual." The bloodhounds of 'un-Americanism' failed to notice what would later be accepted in general: that Aaron Copland and A Lincoln Portrait showed America in a good light to the rest of the world.

G.K. Williams

Symphony Australia © 2004

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Elgar's Froissart

I’m considering occasionally posting my program notes to this page. I wonder what the reaction will be?

Edward Elgar

(1857-1934)

Froissart – Overture

 

Though not often heard, the overture Froissart, foreshadows the mature Elgar who was gradually to emerge in the 1890s. Success seemed all but assured, however, when Elgar and his wife, Alice moved from the Midlands to London in 1889. And although the move from the provinces denoted a degree of self-confidence on Elgar’s part, he had still not, at the age of 32, written anything of sustained originality. By March 1890 Edward and Alice had moved to 51 Avonmore Road, Kensington, and it was there that Froissart was begun, 6 April. The invitation to compose had come, ironically perhaps, given the Elgars’ move to the capitol, from the Three Choirs Festival, the famous music festival that takes place every three years alternately in Hereford, Gloucester, and Worcester (Elgar’s home town), and for which he had played as a violinist (notably under Dvořák in Worcester in 1884).

 

The choice of subject matter for this early work may reflect a projection of confidence. Although the work is not strictly programmatic, it is named after Jean Froissart (c.1337-c.1405), whose Chronicles have been recognised as the ‘chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14^th-century Kingdom of England and France’. As with many another work of Elgar’s it is prefaced by a motto, this time by Keats:

            When chivalry

Lifted up her lance on high.

Froissart begins with a flourish that could justifiably be described as ‘chivalric’ before settling into one of those Elgar themes that commentators (and Elgar himself) regularly characterise as ‘nobilmente’. The 15-minute work contains four identifiable themes governed by a somewhat loose and rhapsodic adherence to a sonata structure. Some commentators have pointed out this early work’s formal weaknesses, but the violinist W. H. ‘Billy’ Reed, later to write a book of perceptive reminiscences about Elgar, pointed out ‘the wonderful clarity of the scoring, the knowledge displayed of the tonal values of the instruments and the infallibly right placing and distribution of the notes of the various chords.’

After completing the work Elgar made several attempts to find a publisher for the work, first Novello’s, then Messrs Goodwin and Tabb, until Novello’s agreed to publish it. Elgar himself conducted the work on 3 September. But after the winter of 1890-91, he felt defeated by London and he and Alice and their 10-month daughter, Carice, took up a house in Malvern.

Elgar did not have cause to be downhearted for long. His cantata The Black Knight was produced on 18 April 1893 by the Worcester Festival Choral Society. 1896 saw first performances of The Light of Life (Lux Christi) at the Three Choirs Festival, and of Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf during the North Staffordshire Festival at Hanley. Olaf was repeated at the Crystal Palace on 3 April 1897, and a little over two weeks later, Elgar’s Imperial March, composed for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, was performed there. The Queen herself accepted the dedication of Caractacus, which Elgar conducted on 5 October 1898. And this crescendo of success culminated in the Enigma Variations of 1899. For Elgar the 1890s had a noble trajectory.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2011 

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Escape from monolinguism

Back when I used to live in Central Australia, I always used to relish the fact that the main streets of Alice Springs were full of the sound of Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara and Warlpiri. Here I love that LA is bilingual and I hear equal portions English and Spanish around me.

Other blogs of mine on Central Australia are:

Journey to Horseshoe Bend - ten years on, 28 May 2013
Life-changing statements, 16 December 2012
Ah, Nathanael, 29 November 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012