Pag Note diadura THE BELFAST MUSIC SOCIETY in association with THE ARTS COUNCIL FOR NORTHERN IRELAND and THE MUSIC DEPARTMENT, QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BRIAN RAYNER COOK (baritone) ROGER VIGNOLES (piano) Elmwood Hall 7.30 p.m., Saturday 25 January 1986

Three Songs Music for a while The cares of lovers Man is for the woman made Six Heine Settings from "Schwanengesang" Der Atlas Ihr Bild Das Fischermädchen Die Stadt Am Meer Der Doppelgänger Don Quichotte à Dulcinée Chanson Romanesque Chanson Épique Chanson à Boire PROGRAMME Two Irish Settings Island Solitude The Little Rath Songs of Travel The Vagabond Let Beauty Awake The Roadside Fire Youth and Love INTERVAL (World première) In Dreams The Infinite Shining Heavens Henry Purcell Franz Schubert Maurice Ravel Havelock Nelson Ralph Vaughan Williams Whither Must I Wander Bright is the Ring of Words I have trod the upward and the downward slope

Three Songs 1 Music for a while The cares of lovers Man is for the woman made Henry Purcell (1659-1695) Purcell wrote over 250 songs for solo voice, but because much of the repertoire was for theatrical performance singers have never explored it as fully as they might.i This great corpus of vocal music, which also includes duets, trios and choruses, is marked by two enduring fea- tures of Purcell's genius - his gift for writing idioma- tically for the voice, and his unfailing attention to the purpose for which each song was required. 30833 5tos All of these three songs were written as incidental music for plays and come from the last years of his short life. Music for a while is from Dryden's Oedipus of approximately 1692, and is remarkable for its symbolism related to the episode of the play in which it appeared, for in Act 3 the ghost of Laius is raised with the help of this air, Tiresias calling for music as wondrous as that with which Orpheus charmed the gods'. Thus the conscious artistry of the ground-bass which underpins the beautifully-poised vocal line could be said to represent the close confines of death', its modulatory middle section the release of Laius's spirit, and its return to its original pattern the inexorable return to the underworld. AGOS diaaoq The cares of lovers appears in the masque set by Purcell for Act 1 scene 2 of a contemporary version of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens performed in 1694. It remains one of the few songs outside his operas which Purcell set as an orna- mented recitative, perfectly suiting the thoughtful words. It is followed in the masque by a jaunty song suggesting that it is better to stick to wine. nove oljons od

3 drama of each poem into the accompaniment as an aid to the voice and how subtle changes of the basic stanza form create moods and emotions far beyond the apparent simpli- city of the device. As in Winterreise, most songs are in the minor, and modulations to the major usually denote dreams, or remembrances of unattainable or past pleasure, but never a present or enduring happiness. og de eval way - 31sed 60014 The heavy, dragging accompaniment of Atlas precedes and then parallels the vocal line with obvious imagery, and after the major middle section returns inexorably even though the voice cries out in pain. In Her Portrait Schubert portrays the poet's stillness, the mirror image, the smiles, and the tears with what can only be called genius. It is amazing how the opening music returns, exactly as before, but apparently subtly changed by the experience of the central episode. The Fisher Girl appears on the surface just a lyrical barcarolle, but given the poet's experience encompassing it, takes on a strange simplicity, enhanced by the magical Schubertian transpositions of the middle stanza. The Town and By the Sea offer two different evocations of the sea in the piano part, the voice suggesting the reasons for this metaphor for the poet's emotion. The 'ruffles of the grey expanse of water' beyond which the town can be seen are beauti- fully expressed, as is the mist and chill which follows. The singer, who has had to sustain the calmness of the vocal line of By the Sea, must now gather himself for the dramatic and frightening monologue that concludes the group. We cannot forget that the accompaniment is tolling out the Dies Irae as a ground bass to this agonising song.

bra Der Atlas (Atlas) 4 Mod Unhappy Atlas that I am, I must bear a world, the whole world of sorrows. I bear what is unbearable and my heart wants to break. Proud heart - you have what you wished. You wanted to be happy, infinitely happy, or infinitely wretched - proud heart! And now you are wretched. Ihr Bild (Her portrait) I stood in dark dreams and gazed at her portrait, and the beloved features took on a secret life. Upon her lips played a wondrous smile, and what seemed melancholy tears glistened in her eyes. My tears too flowed down from my cheeks - and ah, I cannot believe that I have lost you!

5 Das Fischermädchen (The Fisher Girl) Lovely fisher girl, let your boat glide to the shore; come and sit by my side, and hand in hand we will whisper together, Lay your head on my heart and be not too much afraid. Fearlessly you entrust yourself to the wild sea every day. My heart is just like the sea: it has its storms, its ebb, its flood; and many a lovely pearl rests in its depths. Die Stadt (The Town) On the distant horizon, like a misty image, appears the town with its turrets, veiled in evening twilight. A damp gust ruffles the grey expanse of water; with weary strokes the boatman rows my boat. The sun rises once again, radiant, from the earth and shows me the place where I loved and lost.

6 Am Meer (By the Sea) The wide sea glittered in the last rays of evening; we sat by the fisherman's lonely hut, silent and alone. The mist rose, the waters swelled, the sea-gull flew hither and thither. From your loving eyes. tears welled forth. I saw them drop on to your hand and I sank to my knees; from your white hand I drank the tears. Since that hour my body wastes away, my soul dies of desire. The unhappy woman has poisoned me with her tears. Der Doppelgänger (The Double) The night is still, the streets are at rest, my sweetheart lived in this house. Long ago she has left the town, but the house still stands where it always stood. And there stands a man, who gazes upwards and wrings his hands with grief and pain; I shudder when I see his face: the moon shows me my own features and form. You ghostly double, pale companion - why do you ape the pain of love that tortured me, in this very place. so many nights in times gone by?

Don Quichotte à Dulcinée Chanson Romanesque Chanson Épique Chanson à Boire Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) 11 110 vot Although Ravel did not visit Spain until he was over 50, his close affinity with the music of the country probably stemmed from his mother's Basque nationality. These three songs written to poems by Paul Morand were commissioned by the film director Georges Pabst for a film he was making about Don Quixote with the famous Russian bass Boris Chaliapin as the Don. Realising that it was difficult to get music out of Ravel in time for a deadline, Pabst not. only asked Jacques Ibert to write the rest of the music for the film, but also requested settings of the three songs from Ibert and a number of other composers as a series of fallbacks. He was right to be so careful: Ravel did not finish his in time, and it was Ibert's settings that Chaliapin sang in the film. But it is Ravel's, completed in 1933, which endure, and the sadness for us is that they turned out to be the last works he ever did complete, his cerebral illness never allowing any more of the music. that teemed in his brain to be committed to paper. The feature of these settings is that Ravel is able to allow Don Quixote in his serenades to Dulcinea to appear as sincere and serious himself as he is in Cervantes' novel, while the music mocks him gently throughout, particularly with many subtle touches in the accompaniments. All three songs use Spanish dance rhythms. The Romantic Song is a quajira with alternating bars of and 3; the Epic 6 8 4 5 Song a Basque zortzico, and the Drinking Song, complete with its hiccup, a jota in triple time with cross rhythms. 4

(Romantic Song 8 If you told me that the earth behs offended you with so much turning, I'd straightway send Panza to it: You'd see it stopped and silent. If you told me that boredom Was your reaction to a sky too inlaid with stars, Tearing apart the heavenly order, At one swoop I'd clear them from the sky. If you told me that space Thus emptied was not all to your liking, Godlike Knight, lance in hand, I'd plant with stars the passing wind. But if you said that my blood Belongs more to me than to you, My Lady, I would pale beneath the reproach And would die while blessing you. O Dulcinea.

9 Epic Song liberty Good Saint Michael who gives me To see My Lady and to hear her, Good Saint Michael who deigns to choose me To please her and defend her, Good Saint Michael be kind enough to descend With Saint George upon the altar of the Madonna in the blue mantle. With a beam from heaven bless my sword And its equal in purity And its equal in piety As in modesty and chastity: My ady, O great Saint George and great Saint Michael The angel who watches over my vigil, My gentle Lady so very like You, Madonna in the blue mantle! Amen. Drinking Song A fig for that bastard, illustrious Lady, Who to shame me in your gentle eyes Says that love and old wine. Bring mourning to my heart, my soul! I drink To joy! Joy is the one aim To which I go straight... when I've drunk! A fig for that jealous fellow, dark-haired mistress, Who whines, who weeps and swears an oath To be ever this pale lover Who waters the drink of his drunkenness! I drink...

**** varedil Two Irish Settings Songs of Travel 10 INTERVAL ********: ************ **** Island Solitude The Little Rath (World première) The Vagabond Let Beauty Awake The Roadside Fire Youth and Love These two songs were written expressly for Brian Rayner Cook. The words of Island Solitude are by Patricia Hanley and refer to the quietness of the islands in the west of the country. The Little Rath (or fort) is by the Belfast poet Sydney Bell. In Dreams The Infinite Shining Heavens Havelock Nelson (b. 1917) Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Whither Must I Wander Bright is the Ring of Words I have trod the upward and the downward slope Robert Louis Stevenson's collection of poems Songs of Travel were published in 1896, two years after his death. Vaughan Williams's settings of nine of them are some of his earliest mature compositions, written when he was in

11 his early 30s and in the middle of his folksong collecting Most phase, though none of these is based on a folksong. were published around the time of their composition, between 1901 and 1905, but the order of the songs as a complete group was only established in 1960, when the final song, directed by the composer never to be sung except at a performance of the complete cycle, was found amongst his manuscripts. They are pleasant and evoc- ative songs, with imaginative word-setting, recalling Schubert's Winterreise, though without the bitterness or the range of that unhappy traveller's memories. The tramping rhythm of The Vagabond sets the scene for the whole cycle as the poet sets out, in this famous song, on his chosen path. In Let Beauty Awake with its rippling accompaniment he sees beauty in nature all around him, but against the dancing of the fire in the next song he has fallen in love with a girl. Youth and Love shows, however, that he is already tramping on with wistful memories; the accompaniment reminds us briefly of both The Vagabond and The Roadside Fire. In Dreams recalls the girl with a chromatic haunted motif and a fixated repeating note, but in the following song he is comforted by a star in the heavens. Whither Must I Wander? speaks first of his cold and hunger, but then of the fact that spring does eventually come. In Bright is the Ring of Words he imagines that he is dead and that his girl is remembering him as she listens to her new lover singing. The final song is a kind of epitaph. It draws the cycle together by quoting from the two preceding songs and beginning and ending with the onward tramping rhythm of The Vagabond: "I have trod the upward and the downward slope, I have endured and done in days before; I have longed for all and bid farewell to hope; And I have lived and loved and closed the door." Programme notes by Hilary Bracefield