MICHAEL Finnissy {*1946} Vocal Works 1974-2015 »Fantasies
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MICHAEL FINNISSy {*1946} vocal works 1974-2015 »Fantasies ... about music, about love and death, about the voice« EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble James Weeks conductor Gesualdo: Libro Sesto {2012-13} ment {Se la mia morte brami} depicts a suave Juliet Fraser, Amy Moore trio of madrigalists ‘in the chamber’ being con - soprano Lucy Goddard tinually soured and overlaid by rawer and more mezzo soprano Tom Williams urgent cries ‘from the street’. No. IV {Quel “no” countertenor Stephen Jeffes, Jonathan Bungard crudel} is a classic female mad scene or revenge tenor aria {albeit for two sopranos, for added force}, Finnissy wrote this set of madrigals in response and no. VI {Resta di darmi noia} moves from to a commission for EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble’s declamatory madrigal to ardent verismo duet tenth birthday concert in 2012; originally a sin - between florid soprano and tenor soloists. Other gle, short pièce d’occasion {now the first piece movements offer surprising vocal combina - in the cycle}, Gesualdo: tions: No. II {Volan Libro Sesto grew into a quasi farfalle} offers major, seven-movement the bizarre juxtaposi - work as Finnissy’s pre - tion of two soprano occupation with the and two bass voices, madrigal genre, and the latter narrating the with the Gesualdo text while the former source material, in - flit around overhead creased. His pro - like the Cupids/moths gramme note for the of the poem – or per - cycle is succinct: ‘Gesu - haps the flame itself. aldo's sixth Book of Its counterpart, No. III Madrigals provides a {Beltà, poi che t’assenti} source for this piece, uses the other four the texts and a few singers – two altos fragments of his music. {here, mezzo and Beyond that the fan - countertenor} and two tasies are mine: about tenors – overlapping music, about love and strangely and uncom - death, about the voice.’ fortably in a tangle of So Gesualdo: Libro different vocal colours. Sesto is not primarily a transcription {there are The only two tutti movements stand out from only flashes of recognisable Gesualdo here and all this subjective, individualistic writhing as there} but a free meditation on some of the cen - monolithic ‘choral’ statements – the whole com - tral themes of Finnissy’s life-work: the expres - pany coming together to articulate emphatic sion and exploration of our humanness in all its block-chords. But this emphatic-ness is ambigu - carnal and spiritual splendour, our urge to com - ous: the ‘joy’ we are offered in the final poem is municate, to couple, to connect. These ‘fan - undercut by the wistful emptiness of the work’s tasies’ are vividly dramatic and, as befits a conclusion, as if to say that such simple certain - Gesualdo cycle, painfully and unambiguously ties are never quite graspable in the mess, pain erotic. Some are latent operas: the first move - and yearning of this world. Cipriano {1974} Tom Fool’s Wooing {1975-1978/2015} Emma Tring Emma Tring* high soprano high soprano Juliet Fraser, Rebecca Lea Juliet Fraser, Rebecca Lea, soprano Lucy Goddard Amanda Morrison mezzo soprano soprano Kate Symonds-Joy Lucy Goddard { } contralto solo mezzo soprano Stephen Jeffes { }, Jonathan Bungard Kate Symonds-Joy*, Cathy Bell contralto solo tenor Jonathan Saunders Tom Williams countertenor baritone Simon Whiteley, Jimmy Holliday David de Winter {solo}, Stephen Jeffes bass tenor Jonathan Bungard, Jonathan Saunders baritone Finnissy describes Cipriano, his first major work Simon Whiteley, Jimmy Holliday bass for vocal ensemble, as ‘a kind of ‘dramatic * conga madrigal’ after the manner of Monteverdi’s Sev - enth and Eighth Books’. The text was collated In response to the John Alldis Choir’s enthusi - by Finnissy from Calderón de la Barca’s play El asm for Cipriano and its success with audiences, Mágico Prodigioso {1637}, and projects us into Finnissy began work on another even more a dramatic confrontation between St Cyprian transcendentally demanding vocal ensemble {played by a solo tenor} and a Demon, who work in 1975, completing the score of Tom tempts him to give into fantasies of the flesh and Fool’s Wooing in 1978. But circumstances pre - yield to its offers of ‘the wisdom of the old vented a performance from taking place at the world, sweet oblivion of all thought, and the time, and the manuscript lay unpublished and love of beautiful women’. At the beginning of unperformed until 2016, when it was finally the work Cyprian is alone on stage, bravely re - given its premiere {of which this is the live sisting his own carnal desires by holding him - recording}, with substantial revisions to the self chaste within a single tone; the Demon, original score having been made the previous played by the rest of the ensemble, begins off - year. These revisions concern the central Mum - stage, shouting, grunting, flexing, writhing mer’s Play, which was originally rendered in an about, forcing Cyprian to redouble his will. As expressionist ‘music-theatre’ style a little remi - the hallucinatory temptations intensify, the niscent of Maxwell Davies; Finnissy’s misgiv - singers join Cyprian on the stage one by one, led ings led to a complete rewrite in a very different by a vision of female love, Justina, sung by the style, provocatively contrasted with the music mezzo soprano. At the end of Finnissy’s scena that surrounds it. Cyprian does seem finally to overcome the Tom Fool’s Wooing is a work of stupendous demon’s temptations as the chorus finally dis - musical and technical challenges, almost un - solves, turning their backs on him. But matched in the vocal ensemble repertory. But it Cyprian’s final statements of resolution and is also a work of supreme expressive directness faith ring ambiguously into the emptiness: as he and physical energy, as the fourteen singers per - dedicates his body to God rather than the plea - form extreme vocal gymnastics in sensual re - sures of the flesh, his voice breaks and lashes sponse to the work’s theme of marriage and the out, his final word – ‘cuerpo’ – ‘body’ – joys of love. Three contrasted panels form the screamed into the silent abyss. Cipriano was piece’s structural outline. The outer panels cre - first performed by Peter Hall {tenor} and other ate a montage of texts about amorous desire and members of the John Alldis Choir, conducted by courtship from various folk sources {Romanian, John Alldis, at the Wigmore Hall in London in Greek, Turkish} while two singers {mezzo and December 1975 and subsequently toured tenor soloists} assume the roles of Bride and widely. After a gap of more than 30 years it was Groom, singing passages from Spenser’s Epi - revived by EXAUDI for this performance in thalamion. The opening section, based on March 2016, from which this live recording is Swedish kulning {cattle-calling} and featuring taken. dialogues between onstage and offstage female voices, seems to be set just prior to the wedding of the work consists of colourful ritual formulae itself, with its presentation of groups of first declaimed before the start of the play, which, women and then men {shades of Les Noces}, when set to florid, microtonal melodies accom - though there is no explicit sequence of events, panied by buzzing drones, seem at first to sug - and a literal marriage ceremony is not depicted. gest an evocation of some far-off, exotic Instead, in the central panel, Finnissy replaces it ceremony. But as Finnissy suggests above, far with an astonishing coup-de-théâtre: an ex - more is at play here: as the piece progresses the tended sequence of an English Mummer’s Play evocative, folkloric aspect of the material be - rendered in an idiom of simple homorhythmic comes increasingly counterbalanced by the textures accompanied by crude drum patterns, sense of an abstract investigation of the materi - casting us als – the pitch abruptly out of and rhythm pat - the erotic reverie terns themselves, and into a paro - and their combi - dical ‘real nation into vari - world’, remi - ous different niscent of the textures. In fact, appearance of the piece does the rude me - not use Javanese chanicals in A or any other folk Midsummer music as its Night’s Dream. source material, After a some - but invented se - what perfunc - quences of tory resolution pitches and to this absurd ac - rhythms which tion, the music are constantly stages another shaped and re - swift cinematic shaped by the dissolve, this composer into time into a re volving, starry universe of his ‘interpretations of the world, and our fan - quiet, blissful consummation – and some of tasies’. As with comparable works of Xenakis, the most remarkable music ever conceived for these fantasies are deeply concerned with an ensemble of voices. archetypes, with a ‘return to source’; so we hear initially the ‘primal’ categories of melody and Kelir {1981} drone, setting up a tension between static and Juliet Fraser, Amy Moore mobile, foreground and background, ‘melodic’ soprano Lucy Goddard and accompanimental, that is explored virtuosi - mezzo soprano Stephen Jeffes cally throughout the work. The piece unfolds as tenor Simon Whiteley a succession of sharply-defined textures; the baritone Jimmy Holliday writing is forceful and blazing, the vocal de - bass mands extreme. Widely regarded as one of the ‘Kelir’ is the name given to the curtain onto composer’s masterpieces, Kelir was first per - which shadow-puppets are projected in Ja - formed by London Sinfonietta Voices in 1982, vanese wayang kulit {puppet theatre}; by exten - lay unperformed for 30 years, and was revived sion, writes Finnissy of his 1981 work, ‘it is also by EXAUDI at Wigmore Hall, London in 2015, a curtain onto which our interpretations of the the day before the present recording was made. world, and our fantasies, are projected.’ The text — J AMES W EEKS EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble EXAUDI is one of the world’s leading vocal ensembles for new music.