Programme Notes

Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night by Walt Whitman

Youth, large, lusty, loving—youth full of grace, force, fascination,
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace,
force, fascination?

Day full-blown and splendid—day of the immense sun, action,
ambition, laughter,
The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep and
restoring darkness.

“Irgend wo, irgend wann…” from Silent Night

Anna Sørenson, a German opera singer whose career has been halted by the dire events of World War 1, is with her husband Nicklaus at basecamp during the Christmas Truce of 1914. As news of the truce slowly reaches the headquarters of each French, Scottish, and German troupe, the lives of Nicklaus and Anna are put at risk. As the two plead for a French Asylum, Anna sings of the horrors, torture, and humanity of each person lost in the foggy blanket of war, emphasizing how the tragic deaths on the field echo and shatter the lives off it.

Vier Lieder, Op. 2

These pieces were written at the beginning of Arnold Schönberg’s transition from the his romantic influences (Wagner, Brahms) into his iconic atonal compositional language. The poems come from Richard Dehmel’s provocative 1896 collection Weib und Welt (Woman and World) for which he was tried and later acquitted for obscenity and blasphemy due to his sensual depiction of romance. Similarly, Whitman’s collection Leaves of Grass was banned from libraries across the United States for its references to same-sex relationships.

“Wie du warst” from Der Rosenkavalier

We meet the young Octavian after a night of romantic firsts. Filled with new emotions, he talks to his lover Marschallin trying to find the right words to describe the fluttering in his heart and ponders what his role in her life will be.

“I worry, that’s all…” from Fellow Travelers

Set in the McCarthy era of the 1950s, Fellow Travelers focuses on the Lavender Scare, a purge and mass firing of LGBTQIA+ people from the United States government. The story centers on the love affair of two men working in the federal government: Hawkins Fuller, a State Department Official, and Timothy “Timmy” Laughlin, a recent college graduate working in a senator’s office. Hawkins holds a reputation for targeting his advances on young men at the start of their political career.

We meet Hawkin’s best friend, Mary, in her Kitchen talking to his new love interest, Timmy. She is struggling with her complicated feelings towards her friend Hawkins as she befriends and grows more and more fond of Timmy.  Mary warns Timmy that although she loves Hawkins, being with him will most likely hurt Timmy in the long term not only professionally but emotionally.

Sunflowers

Described as an “indefatigable guide to the natural world”, Mary Oliver’s poetry focuses on the quiet occurrences of nature and the beauty of the ordinary. Oliver and Whitman shared a love of mystifying the monotonous and slowing down how we see each moment. Richly atmospheric, these songs run the gamut of tempos and moods.

The Sunflowers opens with a swaying piano accompaniment meant to portray sunflowers standing in a field.  The piece has two distinct sections- the first focusing on the childish and active memories of joyous frolicking through the crazy, colorful, dense maze of flowers. The piano is disjunct to represent a child attempting to play an upright piano while the voice leaps to reflect the playful sounds of make-believe.The second is told from a more mature perspective, from the child that as grown up to be an adult. The field remains a special place but has changed to be something more deeply connected to the spirit of the narrator. The pace of the piano slows to focus longer on the complex harmonies and repetitions of text, as if the memories are harder to produce and less at the forefront of the mind.

The surreal ambience of Dreams is created by a hypnotic accompaniment and weaving vocal line. The uncertainty quickly changes course into a nightmarish soundscape of swirling textures as the voice sores above. We crash out of this nightmare and are exhaustingly dragged from our slumber with a labored vocal line that slowly tries to inch higher and higher. We enter a calmer part of a dream- there is safety and warmth here. The piece ends with no clear harmonic resolution, reiterating that this dream does not exist in the same plane as reality.

Sunrise begins with an ominous open that mimics the tone of the sky right before we see the sun appear. It’s unsureness in harmony lets us linger in the stillness from night and makes the listener crave resolution given in a fiery burst of energy from both the piano and voice, symbolizing the sun breaking above the horizon.  We spend the rest of the piece reflecting on what the sun means to us and how a sunrise is one of the most unifying experiences across human experience. The piano paints soft orange light hitting the skin as the voice swirls to find meaning of what this new feeling is. We finally land on this…

“it is happiness”