Abstract out of the Ashes
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ABSTRACT OUT OF THE ASHES: THE RECLAMATION OF A LOST FEMALE NARRATIVE AS TOLD THROUGH JAKE HEGGIE’S SONG CYCLE CAMILLE CLAUDEL: INTO THE FIRE by Lizabeth Malanga This paper explores Jake Heggie’s song cycle Camille Claudel: Into the fire as a musical reclamation of French sculptor, Camille Claudel’s historical narrative. The author provides an overview of Camille Claudel’s life in order to contextualize her place in art history and how Claudel has been represented and treated in recent scholarship and media forms. Through an analysis of Heggie’s biography, this paper addresses his life and development as a composer within the art song genre to gain an understanding of the composer’s ideals as they pertain to his choice of subject matter. A discussion of the circumstances surrounding the genesis and performance history of the song cycle, along with a commentary on the textual and musical setting of the cycle aim to assert Heggie’s music as an authentic reclamation of Claudel’s narrative. OUT OF THE ASHES: THE RECLAMATION OF A LOST FEMALE NARRATIVE AS TOLD THROUGH JAKE HEGGIE’S SONG CYCLE CAMILLE CLAUDEL: INTO THE FIRE A Research Project Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Music Performance By Lizabeth Malanga Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014 Advisor: ________________________________ Dr. Tammy Kernodle Reader: _________________________________ Dr. Claire Boge Reader: _________________________________ Audrey B. Luna 1 2 Introduction Sometimes elements of inspiration and opportunity align and great works are the result of happy circumstance. This paper will delve into one such instance: Jake Heggie’s Camille Claudel: Into the Fire. Commissioned to write a work for the prestigious San Francisco based Alexander String Quartet, Jake Heggie took his lifelong interest in the life and work of French sculptor Camille Claudel and turned it into a new monodrama/song cycle that during its debut featured the quartet and American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. With texts by librettist, and frequent collaborator, Gene Scheer the cycle offered a fresh perspective on Claudel’s life and work through music. Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was a controversial, fascinating, creative, and brilliant femme-artist during a momentous era at the turn of the century in France. She was an artistic genius who was successful despite her inability to transcend her gender and social stigma. Her artistic and romantic relationship with Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)) has come to define her and her place in history as an errant muse. Her brother, Paul, and their mother had Claudel institutionalized due to her deviant behavior and this subsequently led to her descent into paranoia. She endured thirty years in an asylum and upon her death was buried in mass grave; no one from her family attended the funeral or claimed her remains. Claudel has slowly gained recognition since the early 1980’s as scholars began to rediscover her sculptures and family members started to share her letters and photographs. Misread and misrepresented throughout her life and now in death, literary and film interpretations of Claudel’s life have framed her experiences around her tumultuous relationship with Rodin. Recent scholars, however, have attempted to liberate Claudel from these readings; placing the emphasis on her marginalized experience as an independent female artist of genius in the French patriarchal society during the late nineteenth century. Heggie is amongst this collective that is determined to reclaim and empower Claudel’s story by repositioning her not as a victim but as the complex female artist who’s life was dramatically transformed through her experiences. His unique compositional style lent itself to this effective monodrama for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. Gene Scheer’s innovative lyrics provide an authentic emotional narrative for Claudel by using her own words to convey her story through her sculptures at a pivotal moment in her professional and personal life. The resulting composition, described by Heggie both as a song cycle and as a monodrama, has a clear dramatic 3 arc, an emotional journey, and deeply human story. The result is an effective and fresh new work, which easily transitions from the recital stage to a larger production in a concert hall, destined to become an important addition to the repertoire of art song. The purpose of this discussion is to explore Jake Heggie’s musical reclamation of Camille Claudel’s historical narrative through a discussion of the song cycle Camille Claudel: Into the fire. The approach to this subject will be fourfold. First, it will provide an overview of Camille Claudel’s life in order to contextualize her place in art history, despite the social/gendered expectations governing nineteenth century France. Second it interrogates how Claudel has been represented and treated in recent scholarship and media forms. Through an analysis of Heggie’s biography, this work will address his life and development as a composer within the art song genre to gain an understanding of the composer’s ideals as they pertain to his choice of subject matter., It will explore the circumstances surrounding the genesis and performance history of the song cycle and the textual and musical setting of the cycle as it relates to expressing Claudel’s authentic narrative by including her sculptures as primary sources. In doing so, librettist Genre Scheer and Heggie use her own sculptures as a layer of understanding for how Claudel engaged with the world around her. In this author’s opinion, Camille Claudel’s story as told through Jake Heggie’s composition repositions her from being a victim of her circumstances to a woman deserving the role of a heroine who possesses a relevance to modern audiences today. Moreover, the author asserts Heggie’s monodrama/song cycle, Camille Claudel: Into the Fire, to be a substantial contribution to the art song repertoire for female singers who desire to share in Claudel’s compelling transformative journey. Camille Claudel: Femme Artiste and Female Genius In order to best understand the innovation in Heggie’s setting of Camille Claudel’s story, we must first discuss her position as an artist in early 20th century France and her eventual tragic demise. Claudel’s life story is emblematic of the struggles female intellectuals faced as they attempted to engage with the social structures and gender expectations that framed the public sphere at the turn of the century. Camille Claudel was known to only a handful of admirers in France as recently as thirty years ago. As a female sculptor of the late nineteenth century she defied the prejudiced patriarchal society in which she lived. Claudel was determined to establish herself as an artist 4 and she attempted to have authority and complete autonomy in her personal and professional life-- a struggle she endured until her tragic death in 1943. Claudel was beautiful, talented, determined, witty and fiercely independent, traits that ultimately sustained her as an artist at a time when women simply were not favored to be career artists. Camille Claudel was born on December 8, 1864 in a small town within the Champagne region of France. She was the eldest of three children born to Louis-Prosper, a registrar of mortgages, and Louise-Athanaïse, a woman with a bourgeoisie heritage. She had a sister, Louise, and brother, Paul, who would become a poet, playwright and diplomat (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p.11). By age 12, Camille was already showing signs of artistic promise in her sketches. At age 13, she sculpted David and Goliath and caught the attention of the sculptor Alfred Boucher, who would then become the patron of Claudel’s atelier [French for workshop] once she moved to Paris.1 Her father amassed enough wealth to employ a private instructor for his children and under this guidance Camille received an education that went beyond the standard generally given to women at that time. Eventually, it became clear that the provincial town in which she had grown up lacked the necessary facilities to offer advanced studies in art for women. Another setback to Claudel’s development was the barring of women from nude studies; they were absolutely excluded from mainstream art and commissions of the time period due to societal norms and practices. Monsieur Claudel made the executive decision to move his family to Paris for the sake of Camille’s art and also for Paul’s education in literary studies (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p. 18). In 1881, Claudel began her studies at the Academie Colarossi at age seventeen. She had enrolled in the most revolutionary institution of the time that gave men and women equitable admissions and pre-professional opportunities. It was clear from the beginning in her choice of artistic institution that her career was already on the edge of propriety. During her studies at the Academie, Claudel rented an atelier with two British girls, one of who was to become her life- long friend, Jessie Lipscomb. Lipscomb had crossed the English Channel in search of opportunities that could not be found in England and she was eager to live a life liberated from the pressures of Victorian morality and propriety. Lipscomb and Claudel shared many personal attributes, the most notable being their complete disregard for propriety and their singular 1 It was old tradition for established artists to regularly visit student’s ateliers or studios/workshops and charge nothing for their advice (Ayral-Clause; 2002, p.28). 5 determination to succeed, it was clear they were to be good friends. The two of them happily shared their atelier and their newfound freedom at a time when it was very suspect for young women to have an apartment of their own in Paris, even though the Claudel household was just across the street.