The Little Blueprint? - thinking about Librettos

In the early 2000s, I wrote the libretto for a musical adaptation of  T.G.H. Strehlow's Journey to Horseshoe Bend. The novel is an account of a young boy and his family's attempt in 1922 to flee their home in remote, inland Australia and get to the coastal city of Adelaide where his desperately-ill father can receive medical attention. As the family travels through Australia's desert regions, the boy Theo becomes aware of his missionary father's mortality even as their Aboriginal guides awaken him to the totemic significance of the landscape. The work that Andrew Schultz and I wrote, based on Strehlow's novel, therefore blends Aboriginal lore, language and vocal-style with the European orchestra and European choral tradition.   

As I have again been thinking about the nature of libretto-writing lately, I thought I’d reprint this article which first appeared in 2007 in the Manchester University Press/Open University publication: Music, words and voice: A reader.

The Little Blueprint? – an amplification of the meaning of ‘libretto’ 

A lyricist once couldn’t help himself when he heard someone whistling a Tom Jones hit. ‘I wrote the words,’ he skited. Annoyed at being interrupted, the whistler said, through clenched teeth, ‘I wasn’t…whistling…the words.’  Does this sum up the problem for lyricists, and by extension librettists? Should we expect people to pay more attention to the words?

Actually, you’ll get a much better sense of what makes a libretto if you see it as more than merely ‘the words’, or the ‘words on the page’. In its largest sense a libretto is a suggestion to the composer of what s/he should achieve dramatically. That’s not to say that a libretto can’t possibly have its own reading pleasures. Many of the examples below are drawn from the libretto for Andrew Schultz’s and my Journey to Horseshoe Bend which to a greater-than-usual extent betrays its origins in a book, the book of the same name by T.G.H. Strehlow[1]. Of course Journey to Horseshoe Bend (JHB) is not an opera either, and it could be instructive to wonder why not. But a libretto, whether to an opera, oratorio or cantata, should only really be fully assessed alongside the music that it leads to.

When colleagues of mine derided the libretto of La traviata as ‘terrible writing’ I suspect they had mistakenly judged it as armchair reading or playscript. But were they reading it for the aurals and visuals suggested by the text, that is, testing to see if it contained what Verdi called ‘scenic’ words? Were they reading it to see what musical product Verdi could make of it?

I sense that much of the underestimation of libretti relates to an overestimation of the importance of words in theatre. Being able to write good dialogue does not necessarily make a good playwright. This is to miss the other essential dimensions that make good theatre. It’s probably best not to think of words as the basic unit in a libretto either. What’s more important is something bigger – a physical action, a use of the space, a psychological beat – albeit all with musical resonance. You can of course suggest action and shape with any number of words. To produce something as refined as 20 pages of libretto requires precision and control as well as powers of suggestion.

Is Piave’s libretto to La traviata really so poor? It sets up strongly contrasting characters in strong situations reflected in different settings. It provides good opportunities for contrasting music, but guaranteeing a forward flow. This text may be sparse – and when you read it aloud you get through its transitions quicker than spoken dramatic development should let you - but the point is it is text waiting to be sung, action waiting to be set to music. When performed it is complete. Librettist and composer have contributed. They were both creators; they were each other’s first audience.

It should be said that Journey to Horseshoe Bend was the result of a true collaboration. While Andrew and I didn’t do each other’s jobs, we discussed the work for a good two years, shared ideas, felt comfortable making suggestions about either libretto or score and mostly found ways to incorporate each other’s suggestions, even if there were initial doubts. There was a vigorous to-and-fro.

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Opera reformers have often started with the words. Wagner’s theoretical text, Oper und Drama promoted a relationship between words and music. Wagner is thought to have backed down when he came to write Tristan und Isolde, under the influence of the philosopher Schopenhauer, who had put music on a pedestal. We have in Tristan and Act III of Siegfried moments of pure sound, melismas on single syllables even, which the younger Wagner had derided. The music clearly comes first – or does it? After Oper und Drama, as Jack M Stein pointed out years ago in Richard Wagner and the Synthesis of the Arts, Wagner wrote an essay called Beethoven, in which he lit on another opposite partner to music, what he called ‘pantomime’.[2] It was music and action that he paired in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the other work (besides Tristan) that he took time out to write before returning to the Ring and the dramatic high pressure of Götterdämmerung.

We have here a clue to what else the libretto is besides a ‘little book’. It’s a little springboard for musical action. The libretto is, in addition to words and perhaps more importantly, the larger plot movements, sequence, scenes, mise-en-scène, characters, numbers, a suggestion of duration, proportion and pace. It might even hint at a compositional scheme. J.D. McClatchy (1984, An American Tragedy) tells of how he first presented a libretto A Question of Taste, to William Schuman, who said ‘they [the words] don’t do anything for me.’[3] McClatchy tried to point out that ‘the image in line 3 links up in line 6,’ but Schuman cut him off: ‘I told you it [the libretto] didn’t do anything for me.’ McClatchy went back and introduced a new character to add a tenor voice, formulated more solos, duets and choruses, and thought less ‘of the dramatic unfolding and more of the musical progression.’

Early on in the creation of JHB (at libretto stage) I developed a sense of musical numbers that Strehlow’s work could be broken into. This partly determined the means of making the adaptation from T.G.H. Strehlow’s 220-page novel. Bringing the chorale Wachet auf in as soon possible meant fast-forwarding through the first 22 pages of Strehlow’s text. Indeed the first pages of Strehlow’s book were rethought to provide musical opportunities – sunrise, chorale, travelling music. Andrew and I discussed the idea of the three significant stopping places in the novel (Henbury, Idracowra and Horseshoe Bend) being ‘camps’ or points of rest, defining three Acts, or the parts of a broadly ternary form. Notwithstanding the fact that Andrew agreed early on that the work would be through-composed (and this accounts greatly for the inexorability of the work’s progress to Pastor Carl’s death), I am convinced that thinking the libretto in terms of set numbers also helped crystallise the moments.

The first draft of the libretto for JHB is very like prose, a cut and paste from the novel to work out what more to cut. The cantata was initially conceived as a work for narrator, chorus and orchestra. To study the various drafts is to follow the course of a piece of writing towards the status of a libretto. Of course our JHB doesn’t become a fully-staged opera, but subsequent drafts took on more musico-dramatic aspects. At first there was no boy soprano Theo, and passages such as the third scene’s night journey through the desert oaks were conveyed more prosaically:

Journey to Horseshoe Bend, scene 3 - 1st draft[4] CHORUS Friday, 25 October. NARRATOR ‘It was half past two next morning when Theo was wakened by the sudden blazing of the restoked campfire and the talking of Njitiaka and Lornie, who were rolling up their blankets (87).’ They broke camp ‘and the van moved away from the cheery blaze of the campfire into -’ NARRATOR & CHORUS  - ‘the moonlit sandhill silence (87).’ Processional (Brittania Sandhills) music: the ‘sighing of casuarinas’. Sandhill music. NARRATOR ‘The resinous scent emanating from the bulging tufts of spinifex…was not as overwhelming in the cool night air as it had been in the heat of the previous evening; but it nevertheless pervaded the whole atmosphere with the unmistakable menace of its aroma. For here as elsewhere in the Centre this resinous fragrance drew attention to the deep loneliness and the dangerous waterlessness of the huge inland sandhill regions (87).’ ‘[The] continual sighing of the magnificent desert oaks in the soft night breeze indicated the extraordinary length to which their jointed needle-like leaves had grown (88).’ Theo thought of the iliaka njemba, the emu-like phantom that terrified Aranda children. ‘The black forests of desert oaks, whose moon-silvered crests were shimmering so brightly, kept on exciting Theo’s intense admiration (90);’ ‘Talpa, not taia,’ said Njitiaka, correcting Theo’s western Aranda word for ‘moon’….He pointed out some of the prominent sites. ‘NJITIAKA’[5] Nakua potta kuka [   ], raka kngara [  ] NARRATOR ‘Gradually the dark eastern horizon became tinged with grey. The blurred and shapeless tree forms began to reveal their limbs with increasing clarity. The eastern sky became overspread by a reddish-yellow tinge, and finally the spinifex tips on the crests of the sand-dunes began to glow in the first rays of the rising sun….the sudden burst of warmth that accompanied its full revelation foretold that the day…would be, in local terms, a “real scorcher” (90).’ CHORALE CHORUS (O Sacred Head sore wounded) [1st verse] Aka tjantjurrantjurrai, Ilkaartapartangai....[6] NARRATOR ‘About midday they reached the end of the Brittania Sandhills (97).’ ‘Njitiaka pointed out a dune which overtopped all other sandhill crests by scores of feet –

And suddenly the sense of climax is interrupted, and we are still travelling…

It was only later that much of that information was transformed into a duet between Njitiaka and Theo, raising the dramatic, and at the same time, musical profile of the work. As the frequency of Theo and Njitiaka’s exchanges increased so action took over from narrative:

Journey to Horseshoe Bend, scene 3 - final version T.G.H It was half past two next morning when I was wakened by the sudden blazing up of the restoked campfire. Njitiaka rolled up the swags and untethered the donkeys. NJITIAKA Keme-irreye tangkey ngkerne lhetyenele![7] T.G.H. And we moved away from the cheery blaze of the campfire into the moonlit sandhill silence. NJITIAKA Unte irnterneme urnpe lhanhe? Lhanhe yurte-ipne urnpe. Unte irterleretyeke kwatye kweke ware nemenhe nhanerle. THEO Spinifex tufts - Kicked up by donkeys - Have such an odour, a certain smell? Strange, lonely, dry; Moonlight, sandhills, silence NJITIAKA Werlethenaye werinerle irrkepe ngketyeke ingkwarle mpareme. Ilpele thwerte-nirre ngkeleme. THEO Desert oaks, Sighing, Their long needles swishing, Sighing, crying, calling… NJITIAKA (pointing it out) Pmere ngkweke lanhe, Kwatye pmere. Karte ngkwekeneke pmere. THEO Kwatye? NJITIAKA Ya, pmere ngkweke THEO Your home? NJITIAKA Leyeke pmere. THEO Taye parrtyeme The moon is shining - NJITIAKA Terlpe! THEO What? NJITIAKA Terlpe parrtyeme! THEO Terlpe parrtyeme? Showing our way NJITIAKA Unte arrtye irrtne ilmeletyeke? Lanhe renye ‘terlpe’ itye ‘taye’. (Dismissively) Western Aranda! THEO Terlpe larnnga-larnnga… NJITIAKA Awa! THEO Shadows, moonlight, sandhills Terlpe imerneme nwerneke.

You’ll notice that in the first draft there was the suggestion of another chorale to be used in the musical texture. The repertoire of chorales was reduced as work proceeded. Andrew rightly sensed that too many chorales would create an excess of material to shape while having to stick to our brief for the duration of the work. But it is important to note that these decisions came out of discussions at the libretto-writing stage.

It has been said that music has a degree of persuasiveness that words can only aspire to. The completion of the chorale at the end of JHB is more moving than a mere spoken rendering would be. Music can even, handily sometimes, lead us up the wrong emotional path. So what do we miss if we don’t know the words?

At the end of Das Rheingold, there is a shimmering and swelling in the music which finally blazes forth in a proud, even harsh, assertion of triumphal power. The Gods are finally crossing the rainbow bridge into their citadel Valhalla.

This is the most wonderful example of pure, unalloyed ‘rubbing-the-loser’s-nose-in-it’ victory. An audience may even hate themselves for feeling excited, associating Wagner’s music with Nuremberg Rallies and sheer unconscionable arrogance!

But the thing is: the ‘Entry of the Gods into Valhalla’ can only have this meaning when you’ve paid no attention to the storyline; when you’ve ignored the dramatic context. Because when you finally hear this passage in the theatre, or at least as part of the music drama, to use Wagner’s term, you realise that the gods are entering a kingdom that has been doomed; that Wotan and the other gods are blind, as Loge says, ‘to the end towards which they are heading’. He says it, but we even see them step over the dead body of Fasolt or freeze momentarily at the sound of the Rhinemaidens keening below. It is the most spectacular example of irony in the history of… well, what is it? Music or Drama? But one thing’s for sure. You need the drama to ‘get’ this irony. The combination of both elements together creates an emotional nuance that libretto and music wouldn’t be able to achieve on their own. And it’s not just Loge’s words that fulfil the whole condition of undermining. We have just watched two hours of Wotan tieing himself in knots, back-pedalling and swindling. You can twig, even without selecting the subtitle option on your DVD.[8]

True, we can be mightily swayed by music, but even misinterpreting depends on knowing what is conveyed by the sounds. Never having read the surtitles at the beginning of Madama Butterfly, we may overlook Pinkerton’s bastardry (the fact that he is calculating the length of the marriage contract) because the opening of this opera is what romantic music sounds like to us; we know from a thousand contexts. Do we know enough about Inuit music to know what is moving in it? The opening bars of Tristan – what do they mean? Without the context – in this case 100 years of tonality – do we know that a minor 6^th in 19^th century Romantic music denotes yearning?

Context is all important. In JHB I was able to convey the outcome of the story of the crow of Mbalka; how he was drowned by the rain women of Erea, in few enough words to allow the music to continue unimpeded, because the story had been previously established. Super-structure. Context. And sequence!

Thinking any of this has much to do with the beauty of the words is a bit of a furphy. The words in fact should probably be as simple as possible. The score can pinpoint the exact shade of emotion; the libretto has an anchoring, orientating primacy.  Be careful of being too flash.

I find John Adams and Alice Goodman’s Nixon in China exceptionally, even movingly clear, so it may seem churlish to pounce on this next example. But I remember being impressed by certain lines in Act I, the chorus singing:

The people are the heroes now

The heroes pull the peasants’ plow

I thought ‘what a nice Shakespearian duality’, and one that you could deduce easily sitting in the theatre. It was only when I read the libretto that I discovered that it was ‘Behemoth’ who was pulling the peasant’s plough. It’s nice poetry, but I couldn’t help but feeling sorry for the poor audience-member sitting in the theatre trying to decipher ‘behemoth’ as the word being defined by that particular combination of vowels?

And on top of that in opera you’ve got the particular challenges to clarity posed by polyphony, melisma, and sopranos. Best to make sure the story’s clear from your large structure, and set up strong, dramatic, character-driven situations that convey a larger message. You’ve got to make sure that the conflicts and crises of the plot have safely been established and resolved.

Of course, a successful libretto should provide the composer with musical opportunities that enhance the dramatic flow. It is an absolute masterstroke in the libretto of Verdi/Boito’s Otello to begin with Shakespeare’s second act and therefore give the composer and the drama a storm to start with.

Journey to Horseshoe Bend fast forwards through the preparations and background to the journey to light on a chorale which arises, as if spontaneously from the voices of the Ntaria women. The first pages draw from the novel to create a couple of musical situations – sunrise and chorale. It was a libretto-stage decision to leave out T.G.H. Strehlow’s impressive ten page description of the massacre history of Irbmangkara, even though it may be the most virtuosic piece of writing in the book. We had to get moving.

A libretto is a blueprint for musical action. If the job has been considered well enough, the composer can sit down and see the musical form inherent in the material. The libretto is good insofar that you can judge by the intelligence of its suggestion of actable music: momentum, weight, musical numbers (who sings what), purely musical segments, and, at the level of detail, what I call its ‘play with specificity’.

JHB is a cantata. It is meant to be a concert work. This was the result of a number of decisions taken at the libretto stage. If JHB had been fully sung it would of course have been twice as long, but speech allowed us filmic pacing, a directness and spontaneity; to move quickly through concepts that don’t normally make it into opera. We were aiming for a certain richness and at the same time intelligibility. We rejected the idea of the narration being sung in recitative (although recognising that the narrator fulfilled some of the function of an Evangelist in a Bach passion), partly to broaden the work’s appeal, but also because we needed another speaking role to pair with Njitiaka. Nevertheless, it is worth testing this theory of libretto writing by examining the proximity of each cantata scene to completely dramatised opera.

Scenes 3 and 4 are arguably the most fully-dramatised. Strehlow’s descriptions of conversations between Theo and Njitiaka as they travel at night through the sand-dune country are turned into duet. In scene 4 Carl’s struggles with his faith, described in third person by T.G.H. Strehlow in his novel, are turned into an aria with responding chorus. This aria is juxtaposed with a cinematic cutaway to Theo’s ditty-like listing of sights around Idracowra station. I particularly love the melody that Andrew came up with when he arrived at what I considered the heart of the scene, and perhaps of the philosophy of the work:

But God cannot be known

Nor made to answer men.

No use in us demanding

The meaning of our pain.

Action and music?  In Journey the ongoing movement of the music was complemented by verbal pointers to direction: ‘…25 miles to the north west rugged Rutjubma…’; ‘…already moving through the…saltbush flat which spread south…’; ‘…turned in a more easterly direction...’[9] Njitiaka gives many of the directions. But these examples are taken from TGH, the narrator.

Journey to Horseshoe Bend stayed a cantata in some ways to preserve the flavour of Strehlow’s original novel. But that meant particular problems. One of the big hazards for libretto writing is leaving too much ‘on the page’. I say that having written a wordy libretto, and having early on tried to force Andrew into setting TGH’s denser and slower-moving sentences. This example is from the third draft. The party have arrived at Horseshoe Bend.

Journey to Horseshoe Bend, scene 6 – 3rd draft CHORUS (continuing under) Horseshoe Bend is the eye of a flame Horseshoe Bend is the eye of  a fire T.G.H. Horseshoe Bend had been remarkable for its cruel heatwaves for as long as human memory went back. NJITIAKA Atua Rubuntjaka janha ntoaka. Pota urbula arei. Itne uralalanga. T.G.H (Translating) Everywhere the Rubuntja men vomited they left black pebbles whose heat essence is evoked to this day in freezing weather. CHORUS (continuing under) Horseshoe Bend is a fiery place A land of burning cliffs NJITIAKA Nana pmara uraka. Nakua ngapa nama. Era ura taka, altjiraka. CHORUS (continuing under) Horseshoe Bend is a fiery place A land of burning cliffs NJITIAKA Nana pmara uraka. Nakua ngapa nama. Era ura taka, altjiraka. CHORUS Of searing plains T.G.H (As if translating for Njitiaka) ‘The main totemic sites in the region were all associated in some way with fire or with the scorching heat of the summer sun. Worst was Mbalka, the home of a malicious crow who had flitted over the landscape at the dawn of time, lighting fires. CHORUS Fire Exploding spinifex Shrieking over sandhills Shooting from branches screaming Writhing from mulga, like pillars of Fire, Crackling torches of flame (Continuing) NJITIAKA Erea tara rana rranthaka, rana lakarlalaka… T.G.H. (Translating) At last, two rain ancestresses from Erea surprised the crow and drowned him. The lake of fire became a sea of water. Clouds of steam hissed up from sizzling tree stumps and charred stumps.

Listen to the music as it is now and you can hear that TGH’s and Njitiaka’s words would have impeded the flow. As a solution Andrew went ahead and composed music for this scene using only bits of the text. Only after the music had been freed in this way did I go back to make sure that the characters told the same story in telegraphic form.

Journey to Horseshoe Bend, scene 6 - final version NTARIA LADIES CHOIR (very quietly) Kaartai, nurna-nha wurlathanai (Father, hear our prayer) CHORUS Horseshoe Bend is the eye of a flame Horseshoe Bend is the eye of  a fire NJITIAKA Urte Rubuntja ntwe-irrke nhakeke. T.G.H. The Rubuntja men vomited over there. NJITIAKA Perte urrpwerle raye… T.G.H. Yes, the black stones. NJITIAKA Itne metyepenhe… T.G.H They’re from fire? CHORUS Fire Exploding spinifex Shrieking over sandhills Shooting from branches screaming Writhing from mulga, like pillars of Fire, Crackling torches of flame Horseshoe Bend is a fiery place A land of burning cliffs NJITIAKA Nhanhe metyeke pmere. T.G.H. This is fire country. NJITIAKA Ngkape nhakele… T.G.H. That crow over there… NJITIAKA metye itekele,... T.G.H. He set all this country alight… NJITIAKA itekele ntgkerrnhe. T.G.H in the beginning. CHORUS Horseshoe Bend, etc…

A libretto needs to be able to turn on a dime. While composing, the composer may ring up and say, ‘I need eight syllables in the following rhythm’. The librettist knows s/he has to tie up three or four plot points in that space as well. There is so much more to appreciate if the libretto is examined hand in hand with the music.

I mentioned before the play with specifity. The relationship between text and music is far more fascinating than a side by side comparison would suggest.

Andrew often says that the music is the poetic element, and that’s true. But well-placed words can enhance a poetic moment. ‘The smell of rain-soaked earth fills the air…’, sings Theo, as his final notes ring out.

I have myself tried to explain the relationship between music and text in terms of the text being the noun and the music the verb, but sometimes the text, acting as context, can be adverb. And sometimes the music is the noun. Andrew’s chorale harmonies and counterpoint give reality to JHB’s Lutheran setting. Is the libretto here the adjective? Can the music be the subtext revealing the text’s true concerns?…[10]

Journey to Horseshoe Bend ends with a storm. Music does storm beautifully. It can convey a storm without a word in sight. Think Beethoven, Rossini, Britten. Think Otello. But it’s important for the audience in JHB to know that that storm confirms Theo’s decision to make his future in Central Australia by corroborating for him the reality of a storm that took place in the mythological era at the beginning of time. That’s the reason for the verbal exchanges between Njitiaka and TGH at the beginning of the third part (the arrival at Horseshoe Bend), and for this exchange towards the end:

NJITIAKA: Kwatye ngkarle arpenhe petyeme

TGH: More clouds?

NJITIAKA: Itne renhe nyenhe inetyeke.

TGH: Those rain-women get that crow always.

NJITIAKA: Ngampakala. Finish him.

Which brought all the elements to a point, after the score was completed - after Andrew had been set free to follow the course of the dramatically-generated music.[11]

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A libretto may mask a great many decisions. It needs to be thin. But one decision taken at the libretto stage can say heaps. Strehlow spends many paragraphs describing Pastor Carl’s character.[12] We needed an authoritative voice. As a bass-baritone Carl had for me associations with a Wotan or a Boris Godunov and in that one decision was all that we needed to say about that ‘rockplate’ clergyman who threw the murderous Constable Wurmbrand off the mission property and who stood in the path of a party of Kukatja avengers. I remember being fascinated by the changed significance that could be achieved merely by assigning words to different characters. Imagine the quite different cast of meaning if you assign the chorus’s words: ‘But God cannot be known…’ to one of the other parts.

All this information can be encompassed by the libretto. And some of a libretto’s achievement may literally be invisible, left to the composer or left out. It may only be realised on stage (another’s job). But let’s go back to the libretto as words, since that is the level on which the debate is usually waged.

The libretto is important. The words are significant. The librettist J.D. McClatchy’s name was left off the CD cover for Emmeline (composer: Tobias Picker). I would have been peeved. And librettos and programs and texts can push composers in directions they might not have explored if left to their own devices. I think of the soundtrack to Bullitt and compare it with Lalo Schifrin’s more recent recording with the West German Radio Big Band[13]. To me the version made to showcase the music lacks the rhetorical pointedness of the soundtrack. It seems to lack the gestural definiteness, seems less urgent.[14] Could it be that ‘text’ (the action) forestalls a converging on purely musical elements, a narrowing of meaning? And yet so often we read in annotations: ‘The composer sensed rightly that the music was coherent in its own terms, and did not need the added literary explanation,’ or ‘We may disregard the program. For the work stands as music.’

Charles Rosen speaks of music’s ‘emancipation from the word’ in a recent New York Review of Books article on Richard Taruskin’s Oxford History of Music; and of how that emancipation enabled sophisticated absolute structures.[15] True, but are they better or worse than texted musical works; there is a pleasure to be had from the way the words and music mesh and collide in Pitjantjatjara chant, for example. Perhaps annotators should accord the libretto and its relationship to the music the same subtlety of understanding that they plead for in relation to absolute music.

But to come back to the words, because I dispute (even discounting larger plot movements, sequence, scenes, mise-en-scène, characters, numbers, a suggestion of duration, proportion and pace) that the words are inferior or weaker carriers of meaning.

A colleague once cited Some Enchanted Evening to me as an example of the primacy of music: it’s the music that we carry away from the performance. Now I guess we don’t go out whistling the words, but even if you only know the first lines of hundreds of songs, the general sense and situation reinforces the message to be taken from the melody, harmony, pace and orchestration, and I doubt if music would be as meaningful if judged, as Stravinsky may have wished, ‘powerless to express anything other than itself’. After all, what is Some Enchanted Evening in musical terms: tonic chord with a melodic turn on the fifth followed by a downward drop, the sharpened fourth in the turn undermining stability; that turn repeated followed by an upward lift to the leading note, but this time with the harmony shifting underneath to the dominant; the turn again, this time followed by a lift to the tonic, but with a sharpened fifth underneath preparing the way to a supertonic 6/5 harmony... Certainly the harmony creates an urging forward and there is a poignancy often found in Richard Rodgers’ chordal progressions one step beyond the harmonically obvious, but does that fully explain the emotional resonance?  I suppose my words prove the lack of music’s poetry. But I still think you at least need to know that the song is about an enchanted evening where you may meet a stranger across a crowded room; what any of us would bring to that love at first sight; words and sentiments that preclude being set to a ‘rumpty-tumpty’ melody.

But don’t take my word for it. Get an audience of Americans to stand with hands over their hearts and sing:

To Anacreon in heav’n, where he sat in full glee,

A few sons of Harmony sent a petition,

That He their Inspirer and Patron would be;

When this answer arrived from the Jolly Old Grecian:

‘Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,

no longer be mute,

I’ll lend you my Name and inspire you to boot,

And besides, I’ll instruct you, like me, to entwine

The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.’

and I bet not a single one of them would shed a tear, no matter how good the tune, at the original words of the drinking song that became - The Star-Spangled Banner.

Gordon Kalton Williams

Open University, ©2006

This article first appeared in Music, words and voice: A reader, edited by Martin Clayton and published by Manchester University Press, ISBN: 978-0-7190-7787-6 

Reproduced by kind permission. 

Acknowledgements 

Andrew Schultz

The Strehlow Research Centre

Katherine D. Stewart

Natalie Shea

Siobhan Lenihan

James Koehne

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[1]  Strehlow, T.G.H. Journey to Horseshoe Bend, Angus & Robertson, Melbourne, 1969. Quotes by permission of the Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs Australia 

[2] Stein, Jack M Richard Wagner and the Synthesis of the Arts, Westport, Conn. 1973

[3] See Alenier, K ‘A Poet’s Distraction: Interview with J.D. McClatchy’, Scene4 Magazine, Sep 2005, http://www.archives.scene4.com/sep-2005/html/infocussep05.html

[4] Figures in parentheses after statements refer to page numbers in the novel, which were only removed late in the writing of the cantata.

[5]  In inverted commas because we had still not settled on having a separate character

[6] ‘Aka tjantjurrantjurrai’ (O Sacred Head now Wounded) No.75, p.169, Arrarnta Lyilhintja Lutheran Worlamparinyaka (Arrarnta Lutheran Hymnal), Finke River Mission Board, Alice Springs, 1997

[7] Now with Doug Abbott’s Southern Arrernte corrections

[8]  If Loge had said, ‘They are not heading to their doom,’ you would not have believed him. Any playwright knows that words cannot overpower accumulated action. Or as psychologist Steven Covey would say: ‘You cannot talk yourself out of what you have behaved yourself into.’

[9] Consider also Andrew’s orchestral layout.

[10] To choose an example from popular musical theatre, My Fair Lady. Prof. Higgins convinces himself he couldn’t care less about such an ungrateful wretch as Eliza Doolittle who would run away and ‘marry Freddy. Ha!’ and then the music wells up, and says, ‘Who is he/are you kidding?’ At this moment music brings the emotion (subtext) to the surface. The idea may have been Frederick Loewe the composer’s, but the music is suddenly text, doing the job of the narrative. The welling up is satisfying as music and as an aspect of the story that has developed to that point.

[11] Sometimes music benefits from the nailing specificity of words. The best-received performance I have heard of Schoenberg’s Pelléas et Mélisande was Will Humburg’s with the Sydney Symphony in 2005. He asked for surtitles giving the movement descriptions, eg “He finds Mélisande weeping in the forest”. They cut through what I’ve often felt was a lack of clarifying repose.

[12] T.G.H. Strehlow provides a huge amount of information about his father on pp7-8 and 20 of the Angus & Robertson edition of his novel. 

[13] Schifrin, Lalo: Bullitt, ALEPH Records 018, 2000

[14] And yet, I saw John Williams conduct a workshop on film music at Tanglewood in 1998. He showed the students that when they re-did the scene ‘and this time, with horns in tune’, the whole scene lifted dramatically. The drama and score are truly twinned.

[15] Rosen, Charles ‘From the Troubadors to Frank Sinatra’: review of Richard Taruskin’s Oxford History of Western Music, The New York Review of Books, 23 February 2006

If you enjoyed this, I have written elsewhere on the Strehlows in:

Journey to Horseshoe Bend - ten years on, 28 May 2013 
http://gordonkaltonwilliams.blogspot.com/2013/05/journey-to-horseshoe-bend-ten-years-on.html

Victory over death and despair in a bygone age, 5 November 2012 and

Ah, Nathanael!, 29 November 2012

James MacMillan’s Viola Concerto

Continuing my series of program notes:

James MacMillan (born 1959)

Viola Concerto

I

II

III

Ever since the BBC Proms premiere in 1990 of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, a symphonic ‘requiem’ for a Scottish woman thought to have been executed as a witch in 1662, Scotland’s James MacMillan has been one of the most sought-after of contemporary composers. He followed up ‘Isobel Gowdie’ with the percussion concerto Veni, veni Emmanuel for Evelyn Glennie and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which received nearly 300 performances within ten years of its 1992 premiere.

Tonight’s work, first performed in January 2014 by Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra with its dedicatee, Lawrence Power, as soloist, is the 18^th of MacMillan’s concertos. A second percussion concerto is on the way. Such is MacMillan’s drawing power that the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is one of four orchestras around the world that co-commissioned the work. 

The strengths of MacMillan’s music come from two sources according to British critic Michael White. One is his ‘great gift for melody’. The other is that his music is driven by ‘an extraordinary kind of fervour’ stemming from his religious and political beliefs. Other commentators may also point out MacMillan’s absorption of influences ranging from the Polish modernists Penderecki and Lutosławski (in his early years) to the local church congregation in Glasgow for whom he has written (weekly) responsorial psalms that can be taught before Mass.

While early works tended to be programmatic, MacMillan has become more and more interested in - proud even - of the abstract nature of music. As he told the Southbank Centre’s Gillian Moore, prior to the premiere of tonight’s work: ‘At a fundamental level, music communicates its beauties, its feelings through…organised sounds rather than words or images....music gets into the crevices of the soul in a way that can be quite baffling to our contemporary culture.’

MacMillan’s own comments on this work (available on his publisher Boosey & Hawkes’ website) stick just to the notes. He outlines a three movement structure in the traditional pattern: fast-slow-fast, and sets out some markers that may be useful to first-time listeners. Each of the movements contains elements of its opposite. The first movement contains a brass ‘dance-like theme’ and ‘a terse little tune in semiquavers’ for the soloist, but only after a slow introduction in which the brass intone a cadence figure which becomes motivically important, that is: ‘the energy of the first movement is offset right from the beginning by something much more cantabile and singing’. Each of the sections of the song-like second movement are headlined by a violent ‘outburst’. The last movement is obviously ‘joyful, humorous, and fast’, but there is a ‘tranquil’ middle section where the soloist begins to declaim against a ‘cushion’ of two each of orchestral violas and cellos (like a Renaissance viol consort). A solo flute nods towards the influence of the Japanese shakuhachi.

It would be a shame, though, for the listener to tick off the structural signposts rather than let the proportions be naturally felt, or enjoy MacMillan’s 21^st century mastery of the orchestral palette. MacMillan has previously commented on the number of great concertos (serving great soloists) in the modern repertoire and the question of the extent to which a composer should ignore or embrace the traditional form (‘near perfection’ in MacMillan’s mind). Perhaps the listener could consider how successfully MacMillan has added to this genre, and how wonderfully this concerto adds to the not overly-plentiful solo viola repertoire. 

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2015

This note first appeared in the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Australian premiere of MacMillan’s Viola Concerto on 1 and 2 May 2015.

To mark the centenary

To mark the centenary of Anzac, I thought I’d re-publish this proposal for a symphonic concert drama that Andrew Schultz and I pitched to several organisations some years ago.

An all-day long symphony of discord rang out, and through it all strode Simpson, walking along next to his donkey, forever singing and whistling as he held on to his passenger, scorning the danger, in sweet defiance of all the explosions, the barking of rifle fire and the harsh machine-gun chatter, clutching on to one small piece of reality, of nature [his donkey], in a mechanised world gone mad all around him.

- Tom Curran, Across the Bar

Proposal for Simpson and His Donkey - Andrew Schultz and Gordon Kalton Williams 

Simpson is Australia’s ‘common soldier’. His story is recounted to unite Australians in a common appreciation of the sacrifices made by our past generations of soldiers. But there are some odd facts that confound the two-dimensional portrait presented to the public – Simpson was English; he was a non-combatant (Field Ambulance), and he decided on using donkeys in the field because, admittedly, they ran out of stretchers on the first day of the landing at Anzac Cove, but donkeys possibly reminded him of summer holidays as a donkey boy on South Shields beach in the UK. In the terror of war Simpson reached back to childhood. So there are richer aspects to the Simpson story than are apparent in the propounding of a national myth – and let’s not forget: Australians invaded Turkey; Kaba Türkçe was spoken in the trenches opposite.

The Sphinx, the iconic landmark at Gallipoli, as seen from the sea where the Anzacs landed on that first day in April 1915.

The sad fact is that Simpson’s heroic deeds were eventually often dragooned to serve chauvinistic ends, and may in fact undermine Simpson’s true heroism, which was, in Inga Clendinnen’s words: ‘staunchly maintaining civilian virtues in the face of war.’

We’d like to explore that full tragedy of his portrayal in another symphonic cantata, following-up Journey to Horseshoe Bend in scale and prospect, this time comprising orchestra and children’s chorus (and possibly soloists). Once again, we would envisage some elements of staging and surtitles.

This proposal came out of Andrew’s idea for a children’s song cycle-cum-opera on Simpson and His Donkey (Sydney Children’s Choir were enthusiastic). Including the SCC would bring up instant opposites: innocence hitting the hard experience of war; metal vs flesh - but also bowdlerisation vs fact. The subject suggests a surprising sonority of war. Simpson died on the morning of the Turkish offensive, 19 May 1915 (in fact, just after!). According to some reports, a band had been heard in the Turkish trenches playing The Turkish March from Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens! It would need to be substantiated but what musical suggestion there is in that!

We’re suggesting a work which traces Simpson’s career both in the three weeks he served on the Gallipoli peninsula and in a public afterlife, framed by the expression of children. We’re saying something about innocence, pressure, spin, good humour, civilian virtues, military juggernauts, great odds. We’ll draw on a variety of sources (including Simpson’s own letters), keeping to a dramatic sequence, though maintaining some of the original idea of a song-cycle. Children’s story-telling may encourage the use of pungent nursery rhymes.

No War Requiem, the emotional complex will consist of close scrutiny of mythmaking, while at the same time telling a tragic tale of a loveable larrikin.  That said, we want a full gamut of emotions: tears through laughter and laughter through tears – and not just for us. ‘Gözyaşlarınızı dindirniz’  (Dry your tears) Atatürk told ANZAC mothers when they visited the battlefield in the 1930s, for their sons now slept in the soil of a friendly country.

Gordon Kalton Williams, ©30 Apr. 08

Red Chamber 2, 紅樓夢

Further to my 20 November 2012 post on The Dream of the Red Chamber, I've come up with a shorter synopsis. I was wondering how short I could get it and still maintain the sense of larger events circling the central love triangle, a sense of mounting sequence, and yet still opportunities for ceremonial ('occasional') music as well as expression of the overriding emotional story. There are elisions that might seem like liberties to those who know the original but I thought I'd make them in the interest of 'integration'.

The Path of the Jade, based on Cao Xueh-Qin’s Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢

Cast:

Jia Bao-yu (‘Master Bao’), the boy with the jade 

Lin Dai-yu, (‘Miss Lin’) his cousin, destined to be his bride 

Xue Bao-chai (‘Miss Bao’), female cousin to the Jias and Wang Xi-feng 

Jia Zheng, Bao’s father 

Madam Jia, Bao’s mother 

Grandmother Jia, matriarch of them all 

Wang Xi-feng, the family’s female enforcer, a close cousin of the Jias 

Aunt Hsueh, aunt to the younger Jias and Wang Xi-feng 

Hsueh-pan, male cousin to the Jias and Wang Xi-feng

Yu-tcun, a poor young civil servant, distantly related to the Jias 

The Drunk Priest 

Snowflake, a servant girl 

Aroma, a servant girl, Bao’s personal servant 

The Goddess of Disenchantment 

Cousin Qin-shi 

Prologue: In a tavern some distance from the capital Beijing, a poor young civil servant named Yu-tcun meets a failed priest who tells him of Jia Bao-yu (Master Bao), Yu-tcun’s distant relative, who was born with a piece of jade from the Goddess of Heaven’s roof in his mouth. Though the Jia family’s fortune is not what it was (and it is hoped that the heavenly boy  Master Bao will arrest its steady decline),Yu-tcun sees opportunity to exploit his tenuous connections with a still-distinguished family. He and the priest reflect on the skill required to cushion life’s downward plunges.

Act I:

No expense has been spared at the Jia mansion for Cousin Qin-shi’s funeral. Maybe a big funeral, showing proper respect for a relative, will persuade the gods to restore the Jia crops, refill their rivers, and replenish their treasure chests. Daughter-in-law Wang Xi-feng orders Snowflake, a servant-girl, whipped for coming late on this 39^th day of the 49-day ceremonies. Into this scene of punishment arrive other relatives, and Wang Xi-feng is overjoyed to greet her Aunt Hsueh and cousins Bao-chai (Miss Bao) and the oafish Hsueh-pan. The Hsuehs have fallen on hard times and need help. The Jias will entertain them royally, though it means stretching resources.

In their favourite part of the mansion garden, teenage lovers Master Bao and Lin Dai-yu, escape the ceremonies and renew their childhood vows of love (Not much longer, surely, until we’re married). Finding them, Miss Bao wants to see Master Bao’s famous jade. Its poetic inscription matches that on Miss Bao’s amulet. Devastated, Dai-yu knows that the rules of feudalism destine Miss Bao for Master Bao (Not much longer surely until they’re married) and she runs away, tearful.

Attending Wang Xi-feng, servant-girl Aroma says she approves of Snowflake’s whipping. Dependent on the family for her livelihood, Aroma fears lax discipline and decadence. Wang Xi-feng is also relieved to have this servant’s approval of the lavish funeral for Cousin Qin-shi at a time of savage cutbacks to the servants’ rations.

Lin Dai-yu reminds Master Bao that she had come down from Heaven a Crimson Dew Flower grateful to Master Bao for watering her and giving her sentient life. Unable to pacify Miss Lin who sees her dreams of marriage turn to dust, Master Bao turns to Miss Bao for comfort, but she is unsympathetic. A paragon of the old values that guarantee family health and who regards Dai-yu as sickly, Miss Bao asserts the stability of feudal tradition.

Act II

In a dream, the Goddess of Disenchantment teaches her human relative Master Bao, the pleasures of sex which will strengthen him through even a prescribed marriage. Master Bao wants to try these out on Aroma. Believing that she was given to the Jia family for Master Bao’s use, Aroma is compelled to agree but she extracts from him promises to apply himself and work on becoming a fit heir for the mansion. All livelihoods depend on it!

Bao-yu's maid, Qinwen, (Aroma). Public domain. 

Too late! Bao’s father, Jia Zheng, thrashes him for neglecting his duties at a time of declining wealth. Nursing his wounds, Master Bao discards the text he has been set by his masters and finds unexpected comfort, instead, in The Great Text on the Inherent Nature of Things.

As more of the family property is pawned, Grandmother Jia and Master Bao’s parents (Jia Zheng and Madam Jia) worry about the need to restore the family’s former glory, and of the suitability of Lin Dai-yu who has long been considered Master Bao’s destined bride. Wang Xi-feng tells them of Master Bao and Miss Bao’s matching amulets (reported by Aroma) and says she knows how to arrange a more auspicious marriage.

Told of his forthcoming marriage, Master Bao is overjoyed, but Miss Lin is in seclusion, sick behind a closed door, when he comes to visit.

Choosing a date for the wedding, the family learn that their oafish guest Hsueh-pan has been arrested for killing a waiter, but Grandmother Jia assures Hsueh-pan’s cousin, their enforcer Wang Xi-feng, that the new magistrate Yu-tcun can be leaned on. He owes his position to Master Bao’s father, Jia Zheng.

The wedding day can therefore go ahead as scheduled. Master Bao is persuaded not to visit Miss Lin who needs all her strength. The family toasts the prospering of their dynasty. At the close of the sumptuous festivities, Master Bao raises the bride’s veil to discover it’s Miss Bao. News is brought that Lin Dai-yu has died, as Master Bao collapses.

Act III

Walking through the Grand View Garden, Wang Xi-feng sees the ghost of Cousin Qin-shi, the spitting image of the Goddess of Disenchantment, who tells Wang Xi-feng that her ‘treasured daughter’s funeral’ concealed the fact that she and her father had an incestuous relationship. Snowflake’s sneers aside, Aroma, the loyal servant, assures Wang Xi-feng that the apparition is a tribute to the vigilance with which Wang Xi-feng protects the family. But Wang Xi-feng is terrified by the vision.  

Meanwhile, having pressured Yu-tcun, Master Bao’s father has been accused by the emperor of corruption and ordered to appear at court. Master Bao’s mother and grandmother fearfully despair that the family’s fortunes will never be restored. Wang Xi-feng is in no mood for ‘waterworks’. She brings news that is both good and bad. Miss Bao is pregnant but Master Bao has disappeared. He has left behind his jade. No sooner does she reveal this news than she collapses dead at their feet, as Cousin Qin-shi’s ghost intimated. It is small comfort when the oafish Hsueh-pan returns, having been acquitted by the magistrate Yu-tcun who was paid off.

Travelling through the provinces to a remote governorship (the emperor’s punishment), Master Bao’s Father sees a priest of the Goddess of Heaven who looks like Master Bao, but before he can tell Master Bao about his son, Master Bao disappears. Bao’s Father reflects on the turn of events that has seen him, a former favourite of the emperor, bereft and exiled.

The nation resounds with bells announcing Grandmother Jia’s death. Returning to his village, stripped of rank, an older Yu-tcun meets again the priest he met at the outset of the story. The priest tells Yu-tcun that his latest instalment of the Jia family story is one of guilt punished, virtue rewarded. It would have required a mere nudge to produce a more favourable outcome. Yu-tcun agrees, but corrects the priest’s naivety. He sees the potential for rise and fall concurrently in all things. As they drink, Xue Bao-chai, back in Beijing, nurses her healthy baby. Grandmother Jia lies in her coffin, awaiting sufficient funds for burial. Madam Jia neglects household repairs while Aunt Hsueh dotes on being a grandmother. The Hsuehs have taken to wearing the robes of the mansion’s owners.

Possible doublings, if acted:

Yu-tcun/Bao-yu

The Drunk Priest/ Hsueh-pan

Snowflake, a servant girl/ Father Jia Zheng

Dai-yu/ Goddess of Disenchantment/ Qin-shi

- GKW, April 8 2015
gordonsymphony@gmail.com

Other posts that might be of interest:

My first post on The Dream of the Red Chamber, 20 Nov 2012

and my program note on Tan Dun’s Nu-Shu, 15 Mar 2015

Adams' good name (reprint from 2004)

Having finally seen Nixon in China (in San Diego last weekend), I thought I'd re-publish this article thought it first appeared in Australian concert programs in 2004.

Adams’ Good Name

John Adams. It’s a good solid New England name. An American is likely to think first of John Adams, the second president, George Washington’s successor. But Australians are more likely to have heard of the composer whose works have been increasingly performed in Australia in recent years. We saw the Australian premiere of El Niño, his new ‘take’ on oratorio, at the Adelaide Festival in 2002, in a concert version directed by his regular collaborator Peter Sellars, who had resigned as Festival Director months before. Harmonielehre was presented twice last year by Australian orchestras: by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and by the Sydney Symphony, who also in November 2003 gave the Australian premiere of Guide to Strange Places, the second of two works by Adams they have co-commissioned. Adams came out for the Australian premiere of Naïve and Sentimental Music in 2000 and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra performed Adams’ The Wound Dresser in the Metropolis series some seasons ago. Anyone who saw the reaction of a young audience to Harmonielehre in Sydney in 1999 will realise that here is a living composer who can grab an audience like a Beethoven.

It’s kind of funny that Adams should have a profile in Australia. His career is in many respects a very American story. Born in what our friends across the Pacific refer to as ‘back East’, he had the upbringing of a typical east coast liberal Democrat, indeed remembers shaking Candidate Kennedy’s hand during the New Hampshire primaries in 1960. And of course northeastern USA is a kernel of American music, birthplace of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, not to mention Charles Ives, whose music Adams honours in 2003’s My Father Knew Charles Ives – along with the music from his grandfather’s dance hall at Lake Winnipesaukee, which he remembers from boyhood.

There was Harvard, and then Adams, the young man, went west. He worked as a storeman and at the San Francisco Conservatory before becoming the San Francisco Symphony’s first New Music Advisor and later Composer-in-Residence, where he worked with Principal Conductor Edo de Waart (later to spend ten years as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony), who premiered Harmonielehre and even suggested the idea for the choral symphony Harmonium (premiered in Australia under Hiroyuki Iwaki), and who recently gave the Australian premieres of Naïve and Sentimental Music and Guide to Strange Places.

Adams seems to have embraced a particular sort of Californian-ness. In a recent piece, The Dharma at Big Sur, premiered for the opening of Walt Disney Hall in October last year, he links himself with Bay Area luminaries Lou Harrison, Harry Partch and Jack Kerouac. California may not fully account for the spirit of joy in his music – northern California is a world away from the swimming pools and movie stars of southern California – but early on Adams decided he would not go down the serial path which beckoned young graduates in the 1970s. (If you go by statements by fellow minimalist Steve Reich, the example of the Second Viennese School just doesn’t track with the land of Chuck Berry and burgers.) Adams’ teacher at Harvard, however, had been Leon Kirchner, a pupil of the inventor of serialism Arnold Schoenberg (who himself famously ended up in California, playing tennis with Gershwin, while clinging steadfastly to the aesthetics of ‘old Europe’), and it is Schoenberg and Adams’ ambivalence to his legacy that is one of the subjects of Harmonielehre, his great 1985 symphony.

Symphony? Adams is a second-generation minimalist. While most composers disown labels, Adams was proud to own ‘minimalism’ when he spoke to me during pre-concert interviews in Sydney in February 2000; proud even that it was an American invention. And why not? Minimalism, so simple and repetitive as to drive some people loopy, has at least given back to classical music the possibility of audiences being able to follow musical process. But Adams has written few pieces in this quintessential minimalist vein. Shaker Loops (1983) is perhaps the only one regularly played. Here again the title reminds us of Adams’ absorption in American culture; as does his choice of texts. The words of Jack Kerouac do not actually appear in Dharma, but the poetry of Emily Dickinson appears in Harmonium, and The Wound Dresser (1988) uses a text by Walt Whitman set with a straightforwardness of line learnt from American songwriters like Gershwin or Richard Rodgers. On the Elektra/Nonesuch CD this example of Adams at one extreme is coupled very tellingly with one of his most beautifully-detailed minimalistic pieces, Fearful Symmetries.

But what makes Adams ‘second-generation’ is the way he has re-incorporated elements of the European tradition. Harmonielehre gets its title from the textbook on standard harmony that Schoenberg was writing in 1911 at the time of his launch into atonality, precursor of serialism. There are passages in Harmonielehre that remind one of Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) or the highly chromatic late music of Schoenberg’s mentor, Gustav Mahler. The arrival of Air Force One in the opera Nixon in China, produced at the 1992 Adelaide Festival, sounds like a cross between Phillip Glass and Wagner, complete with a Siegfried’s Sword leitmotif. But deeper than surface references is the re-evoking of cadential functions. Adams’ is not music that circles in a detached Eastern abandonment of time; it builds up tension to be released in massive climaxes. As a conductor, Adams found over the years that while conducting Terry Riley’s In C, arguably the founding piece of Minimalism, his versions starting getting faster and more anxious. The second movement of his Harmonielehre deals with the Anfortas wound, describing a characteristically European psychological state, but it’s possible that Adams was grappling with an Anfortas Wound of contemporary music, how not to be emotionally crippled by a musical tradition that must have an element of intellectual grit. Naïve and Sentimental Music (1997-98) was inspired by Friedrich Schiller’s 1795 essay of the same name, exploring the difference between spontaneous and cultivated expression.

For Adams is engaged. He deplores the term ‘CNN opera’ yet has found mythic resonance in stories we could find on cable. He became interested in writing Nixon in China when librettist Alice Goodman convinced him that it would be done not as parody, but as some sort of 20th-century heroic opera. As it must: the work looks at the one of the great meetings between East and West. He is currently working on Doctor Atomic, another opera, with the same collaborators, on the inventor of the atom bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Big subjects. His opera The Death of Klinghoffer, based on the hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of the Achille Lauro, seems to keep on proving the painful relevance of art. It attracted wide criticism during the first Gulf War, when it was felt to show too much sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Projected performances of the extract Three Choruses from Klinghoffer were cancelled by the Boston Symphony Orchestra after 9/11: the husband of one of the members of the chorus had died on Flight 11, and grieving performers could not give voice to some of the words. But at first the cancellation appeared to be a free speech issue, exciting considerable newspaper discussion and outrage.

Adams has since responded to September 11 with a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece called On the Transmigration of Souls, given its Australian premiere in Sydney earlier this year. It is a disturbing work using for text the mobile phone messages of victims and the words of the ‘Missing’ cards posted at the site. It almost seems to be looking back from the other side of life, and is paradoxically radiant and ethereal – though there is no gliding over the specific last words of the Flight 11 flight attendant: ‘I see water and buildings…’ One can only admire an artist who is prepared to step back into this sort of emotional cauldron. Adams was a risky choice for the New York Philharmonic to commission for this work, given the previous year’s controversy. But also inevitable. As Vincent Plush said in The Australian in January: ‘For some years now, Americans have looked to Adams as a kind of composer laureate, not yet the paterfamilias figure that died with Aaron Copland in 1990, but one of the same stature, nobility of declaration and clarity of purpose.’

Gordon Kalton Williams

Symphony Australia © 2004

For further information I published a more recent interview with John Adams (Traditional Terms) on 5 September 2013.

August Offensive

Continuing my series of program notes:

Andrew Schultz (born 1960)

August Offensive, Op.92

August Offensive had its premiere at the ANZAC Day dawn service at Gallipoli, Turkey on 25 April, 2013. The work was commissioned by the Australian government’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs as a part of the Centenary of Gallipoli Symphony project. The project, directed by Chris Latham, has involved the commissioning of new works by Australian, New Zealand and Turkish composers to eventually form a full-length work for performance in 2015 - the centenary of the ANZAC landing.
- Andrew Schultz

In terms of Australia’s First World War observances the date that stands out is April 25th, the date on which Australian and New Zealand troops (ANZACS) first landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. But Andrew Schultz’s August Offensive takes its subject matter from events later that year.

By August, Anzacs and other British imperial troops remained dug in to the cliffsides at Gallipoli, British and French troops had a toe-hold on Helles Point on the southern tip of the peninsula. The Turkish Offensive of 19 May had failed to push the Anzacs ‘back into the sea’, and it was decided that the Allies should hazard another push inland. The plan included diversions at Lone Pine and Helles Point and an attack at The Nek (the climax of Peter Weir’s film, Gallipoli). The main force was to take Chunuk Bair (Çonk Bayırı) and Hill 971 and secure the Turkish heights while the British landed reinforcements and began climbing up from Suvla Bay. 

Below the heights. Suvla Bay in the distance, to the north.

Atatürk lookout on the heights

The plan failed dismally. The attacks became unco-ordinated; some troops even got lost in the ravines leading up to the heights. At the Nek within half an hour on 7 August, 234 men lay dead and 138 wounded in ‘an area no longer than a tennis court’. While New Zealanders, with British units, captured Chunuk Bair, the Turks forced the Allies off. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill had predicted ‘a military episode not inferior in glory to any that the history of war records...’ By 17 August, General Hamilton had to admit that this Offensive had failed. Later in the month there were costly and ultimately fruitless attempts to break out of Suvla, and these were the last major battles of the Gallipoli campaign until the Allied withdrawal in December.

Adelaide-born composer Andrew Schultz has written a number of works expressing horror at war and violence. His 2001 opera, Going into Shadows deals with terrorism. Beach Burial is a choral setting of Kenneth Slessor’s great World War II poem about the makeshift burial of bodies washed ashore after a great sea battle. A lot is wound into August Offensive’s unremitting seven minutes. You might note the sound of the suspended cymbal - dry and crisp ‘like the sound of diggers digging on hard dry ground’. Having read the military history of the events, Schultz was struck by the constant digging that went on during the months on Gallipoli. The piece also begins and ends with a whistle blast - an idea taken from the trench whistles used to signal attack. So the piece is in some ways the battle scene. The technical-minded may hear polymetres but there is violence as well as lament for those events in August 1915 that cost so many young lives. 

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2015

This note first appeared in a program booklet for a Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concert on 27 March 2015. Please contact me for permission to reproduce it.

Tan Dun's "Nu Shu"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Tan Dun (born 1957)

Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women

Tan Dun is well known to the world for his film scores: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Hero (2002) and The Banquet (2006). Last year in Melbourne Tan himself conducted his Pipa Concerto and the Triple Resurrection, a work which continues Tan’s interest in the combination of film and music but this time with music prompting the visuals.

Born in Hunan province, young Tan grew up in a world where modern China intersected with indigenous traditions (shamans could communicate with the past and the present, with leaves and stones). After working as a rice planter during the Cultural Revolution and then in the Beijing Opera, Tan went to Beijing Conservatory and from there to New York City where he studied composition at Columbia University with Chou Wen-Chung a student of Edgard Varèse. Now based in New York, Tan is perhaps the most successful exponent of bringing non-Western cultures into orchestral music. This partly reflects his personal biography, and is partly due to his broad concept of counterpoint as reaching beyond sound to encompass the working together (or meshing together) of sound and image, West and East, nature and culture, past and future. Nu Shu is a case in point.

Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women originates in Tan’s discovery several years back that in the village of Shang Gan Tang [Shangjiangxh] in his home province there are women who have had their own means of communication since the 13th century AD. ‘Nu Shu’ means ‘women’s writing’. Advice, messages, instructional tales, life-lessons have been passed down in song form and in a distinct form of writing from mother to daughter and sister to sister these past 800 years. Nicknames for the script include ‘mosquito legs’ writing’ to distinguish it from the square shapes of Hanzi, traditional Chinese writing. Tan prefers its other moniker, ‘music note writing’. The language has been the province of women only (often written on intimate items, such as fans), but is now under threat. Gao Yinxian, described by Tan as the most important woman in Nu Shu village, died some years ago, and Tan Dun promised the villagers that he would create an orchestral piece which helps position the language in the future.

It would be better not to think of Tan’s Nu Shu as an anthropological record. His response to the Nu Shu culture is more poetic, but in creating this work, filming and recording the songs, Tan developed a vast archive that might assist in preserving the culture, an aim he regards among his highest. It is somewhat ironic that a man has finally stepped into this role.

The work sees an orchestral frame around traditional nu shu songs sung on film by women of the village (including He Jinghua, Pu Lijuan, Zhou Huijuan, He Yanxin, Jiang Shinu, Hu Xin, Mo Cuifeng, and Hu Meiyue) Tan’s use of film is true to his concept of counterpoint, in this instance incorporating a counterpoint of time. The ‘archival’ footage denotes nu shu’s past; the orchestra its future. Tan gave considerable thought to the medium which should serve as the bridge between these two dimensions and settled on harp as being the most feminine instrument and one bearing likeness to a nu shu written character. At Nu Shu’s first performance the harp solo was played by Elizabeth Hainen, principal harpist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, which commissioned the work along with Tokyo’s NHK Orchestra and Europe’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam.

Nu Shu has a very poetic structure which could be considered under the themes of women, weeping, rivers and song. Tan sees the work in six parts (Prologue - Mother’s Story (parts 2, 3 and 4) - Nu Shu Village (part 5) - Sisters’ Intimacy (parts 6, 7 and 8) - Daughter’s Story (parts 9, 10, 11 and 12) and Epilogue (part 13)).

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2014

This note first appeared in a program booklet for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Chinese New Year concert, 28 February 2015. Please contact me for permission to reproduce it.

Readers may also be interested in my proposed synopsis for an adaptation of the Chinese classic, The Dream of the Red Chamber, posted 20 November 2012 and the my briefer synopsis posted 12 April 2015.