Program N♪Tes

PROGRAM N♪TES Holger Falk, baritone Julius Drake, piano October 23, 2018 – 7:30 p.m. Forest Hills Church Six Songs after Poems by Johann Gabriel Seidl Franz Schubert Born: Vienna-Himmelpfortgrund, 1797 Died: Vienna, 1828 Composed: 1826-28 In 1826, an aspiring 22-year-old poet by the (Sehnsucht); a celebration of passionate love name of Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804-75) (Bei dir allein); the praise of the simple published a two-volume anthology from pleasures in life (Irdisches Glück), or a which Schubert took the texts for no fewer meditation about where one's real home is than twelve songs—including ione of his (Der Wanderer an den Mond). Im Freien is, very last works, “Die Taubenpost,” in the words of musicologist Susan Youens, published posthumously as the last piece of “a nocturnal serenade to everything and the cycle Schwanengesang. Despite the everyone,” while in the ever-popular inferiority of Seidl's poetic talents, these Taubenpost, “Sehnsucht” (longing) is, for songs gave the composer the chance to once, not a cause for suffering but a source express a wide range of feelings, including of great, quiet happiness. reassurance after a state of restlessness Selections from Hollywooder Liederbuch and Hollywood Elegies Hanns Eisler Born: Leipzig, 1898 Died: East Berlin, 1962 Composed: 1941-42 Next to Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler was Bertolt contemporaries, Brecht and Eisler first met Brecht's closest musical collaborator. Exact in Berlin in the late 1920s, and their friendship lasted until Brecht's death in were later arranged in various cycles, 1956. After years of wanderings in Europe variously known as the Hollywooder (where they were sometimes together and Liederbuch (Hollywood Songbook) and sometimes not), the two men were reunited Hollywood Elegies. All the songs are in 1941 in Southern California, where a extremely short und depict the feelings of a rather large group of refugees from Nazi refugee “driven to Paradise” whose thoughts Germany found their permanent or and feelings are dominated on the sufferers temporary homes (including Eisler's old left behind, one who is struggling with an composition teacher, Arnold Schoenberg). unfamiliar new environment and is keenly For Brecht and Eisler, who both had strong aware that one person's Paradise can be Communist sympathies, the sojourn was not another's Hell (“Diese Stadt hat mich to last. In 1948, the composer was expelled belehrt”). from McCarthy's America; the poet and In the songs, Eisler made use of playwright had departed a year earlier, only Schoenberg's twelve-tone method, one day after testifying before the House combining it with the idiom of the political Un-American Activities Committee. The songs he had written in Germany, with last phase of Brecht and Eisler's working elements of the classical Lied and popular relationship took place in East Germany, music added to the mix as well. The result where both settled in 1949-50. was a stylistic amalgam in which, as Eisler Eisler, who had found work in the biographer Albrecht Betz noted, “the Hollywood studios during the war, familiar appears in an unfamiliar context,” composed about fifty art songs on Brecht where “Eisler's experiences with...film poems during the same period. The songs music have left their mark.” Banalités (1940), Calligrammes (1948) Francis Poulenc Born: Paris, 1899 Died: Paris, 1963 Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), a Many of Poulenc's songs, including these leading light of French avant-garde poetry, two sets, were written for Poulenc's friend was at the center of Francis Poulenc’s andfrequent recital partner, the baritone artistic universe. As a young man, Poulenc Pierre Bernac. The seven songs that make up had known Apollinaire personally; over the Calligrammes received their premieres years, he set more than forty of his poems to during the duo's first American tour in the music. His opera Les mamelles de Tirésias fall of 1948, a six-week coast-to-coast (‟The Breasts of Tiresias”) is based on a journey with rave reviews everywhere. After play by Apollinaire. the premiere of Calligrammes at Town Hall In the five Banalités, we hear, in turn, a in New York City (November 20, 1948) in sophisticated folksong imitation, an essay in particular, there were seven curtain calls and decadent languor, a scherzo filled with five encores. delicious, untranslatable puns, and an ironic In his memoir Diary of My Songs, Poulenc miniature waltz. In the last song, the longest recalled the experiences that had led to the of the set, individual pain receives a cosmic composition of this cycle, events that had dimension as it embodies universal suffering taken place thirty years earlier while the ‟until the end of time.” composer was serving in the Army during Each of the seven songs was dedicated to a World War I: childhood friend, two of whom were no I was then in an antiaircraft section stationed longer alive in 1948. The memories at Tremblay...I would end each day in one of connected to those friends—bittersweet, the little bistros in Nogent. It was actually in fierce, sarcastic, nostalgic, tragic—come one of these that I first made contact with close to constituting an emotional the volume of Apollinaire, thus melding autobiography. what I was going to live through with the poetic fictions of Calligrammes. Ludions (1923), Rambouillet (1907), Je te veux (1897), Enfant martyre (1904) Erik Satie Born: Honfleur, 1866 Died: Paris, 1925 Erik Satie was one of the greatest non- the latter's circle of friends known as the conformists in the history of music, with a “Apaches” and who had more recently deep mistrust of the establishment. He was formed a newer coterie named “Potassons.” a friend and contemporary of Debussy and The name, for which Fargue provided a Ravel who both thought highly of him, yet detailed definition, may be summed up as the path that led to Pelléas and Daphnis was standing for a life-loving, good-humored not for Satie. As he once said of Ravel: person. Songs 1, 3 and 5 are parodistic in “Ravel refused the légion d'honneur but all their intent (the first a memorial for a pet rat, his music accepts it.” the last one for a pet cat), but Nos. 2 and 4 Yet during the last years of his life, Satie strike a darker tone with the “spleen” was taken very seriously by the musical suddenly engulfing our entire life (at least world, as he should have been. With the for a split second), and with a silly play on advent of Dada and Surrealism after World words receiving a solemnly minimalistic War I, his time had really come, and pieces musical treatment. that would earlier have been dismissed as Satie had frequently exercised his parodistic jokes lacking substance were received with a in younger years, working for years as a certain amount of reverence. The five short cabaret pianist at the Auberge du Clou in the songs published under the title Ludions were 9th arrondissement, collaborating with a first performed at an aristocratic masked popular singer-poet named Vincent Hyspa ball, with organ accompaniment no less (1865-1938). For “Rambouillet” and (whose incongruity must have only “Enfant martyre,” the words have not increased the humoristic effect, but still, the survived. The word in the first title is the host of the masked ball, Count Étienne de name of a small town outside Paris known Beaumont, was a devoted patron of the for its 14th-century château); they are both composer. (Ludions, known as “Cartesian simple melodies with sometimes surprising divers” or “bottle imps” in English, are toys harmonies. “Je te veux,” on a rather risqué devised to demonstrate the principle of text by Satie's friend Henry Pacory, is a buoyancy.) sentimental waltz popularized by one of the The poet, Léon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947), an most famous music-hall performers in Paris, old friend of Ravel's, had been a member of Paulette Darty. Song Lyrics and Translations Six Songs after Poems by Johann Gabriel Seidl Franz Schubert Sehnsucht Longing Die Scheibe friert, der Wind ist rauh, The window-pane freezes, the wind is rough, Der nächt'ge Himmel rein und blau: the night sky is clear and blue. Ich sitz' in meinem Kämmerlein I sit in my little room Und schau in's reine Blau hinein! and gaze into clear blue. Mir fehlt etwas, das fühl' ich gut, Something is lacking, I feel all too well; Mir fehlt mein Lieb, das treue Blut: I miss my love, my true life's blood, Und will ich in die Sterne sehn, and if I gaze at the stars Muß stets das Aug mir übergehn! my eyes must overflow with tears. Mein Lieb, wo weilst du nur so fern, My love, where do you tarry so far away, Mein schöner Stern, mein Augenstern?! my beautiful star, delight of my eyes? Du weißt, dich lieb' und brauch' ich ja, - You know that I love and need you; Die Träne tritt mir wieder nah. again tears threaten. Da quält' ich mich so manchen Tag, I have suffered for so many days Weil mir kein Lied gelingen mag, - and for me no song will come, Weil's nimmer sich erzwingen läßt because one cannot force a song Und frei hinsäuselt, wie der West! to murmur forth freely like the west wind. Wie mild mich's wieder grad durchglüht! - How softly does this glow suffuse me now! Sieh nur - das ist ja schon ein Lied! Look - it is a song already! Wenn mich mein Loos vom Liebchen warf, Even though my lot was to be cast far from my Dann fühl' ich, dass ich singen darf.

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