MAX RICHTER THREE WORLDS: MUSIC FROM WOOLF WORKS MAX RICHTER THREE WORLDS: MUSIC FROM WOOLF WORKS

2 THREE WORLDS: MUSIC FROM WOOLF WORKS MRS DALLOWAY 1 Words 1:02 2 In the garden 5:17 3 War anthem 6:56 4 Meeting again 6:07

ORLANDO 5 Memory is the seamstress 0:35 6 Modular astronomy 3:14 7 Entropy 1:32 8 Transformation 2:06 9 Morphology 3:06 Max Richter READERS 10 e ranny of symmetry 1:26 piano & modular synthesiser [1] 11 e explorers 2:04 Sarah Sutcliff e [5] 12 Persistence of images 3:15 Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg Gillian Anderson [16] 3:54 13 Genesis of poetry Robert Ziegler conductor 14 Possibles 1:29 Grace Davidson solo soprano [16] 15 Love songs 2:33 STRING QUINTET Mari Samuelsen solo violin [8, 16] Louisa Fuller, Natalia Bonner violin Hila Karni solo cello [3, 16] John Metcalfe viola Ian Burdge solo cello [11] 16 Tuesday 21:37 Ian Burdge, Chris Worsey cello

3 …Words, English words, are ll of echoes, of memories, of associations, naturally. ey have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fi elds, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief diffi culties in writing them today – that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past. e splendid word “incarnadine”, for example – who can use that without remembering “multitudinous seas” ?

EXTRACT FROM THE ONLY SURVIVING RECORDING OF VIRGINIA WOOLF’S VOICE, A BBC RADIO BROADCAST FROM APRIL 29, 1937 ON THE TOPIC “CRAFTSMANSHIP” AS PART OF THE SERIES “WORDS FAIL ME”

4 THREE WORLDS: are distinct universes, each needing its own coherent musi- cal grammar, and yet the ballet needed to hold together, to have an overall musical fi ngerprint, embodying the voice of MUSIC FROM the author in her manifold guises. Finding a way to reconcile these demands was the ndamental question. WOOLF WORKS When I came to make this recording of the music there was the additional challenge of somehow conveying the multidimensionali of Woolf Works, the ballet, and its e work of Virginia Woolf, in common with that of many 110- minute duration within the confi nes of a single album. great artists, is not easy to summarise. It is profound, vision- is has meant that a lot of the music appears in new forms ary, daring, experimental, but equally at times play l, per- on the record, which therefore bears the descriptive title sonal, intimate and always deeply humane. “music from…” Her subject ma er is a kind of pure research into the e music for the Mrs Dalloway section of the ballet nature of language, personali , voice and the question of be- opens the record, with an extraordinary recording of Vir- ing itself. She seems constantly to ask us, “How can we live?” ginia Woolf herself, reading the essay “Cra smanship” in a It’s this that drew me obsessively to her writing in my ear- BBC recording of 1937. How incredible to hear her voice. It’s ly twenties. And so, having worked together previously on actually Virginia Woolf! INFRA and Future Self, I was excited when Wayne McGregor e musical sections I have included in the record at e Royal Ballet invited me to collaborate again on his focus on three characters in this remarkable novel, namely new ballet Woolf Works based on three of the novels: Mrs those of Peter, Sally and Septimus. e Peter and Sally sec- Dalloway, Orlando, and e Waves. tions (tracks 2 and 4) are related, since both characters are, e process of fi nding the musical languages for the for Clarissa Dalloway, people with whom she had a strong three sections of Woolf Works was two years of planning, re- connection in the past – roads not taken on her journey search, experiment, and theorising. Clearly the three novels through life. For this reason the music, while deliberately

5 simple, hides a number of asymmetries and trapdoors in the whole orchestra, for solo instruments and for chamber the harmonic and rhythmical language; I wanted it to feel groupings, there are also variations which are wholly subliminally as though the material is misremembered a er electronic, incorporating analogue modular synthesis, a long absence. e music for Septimus (track 3), the shell- sequenc ing, digital signal processing and computer-gener- shocked war veteran, is a mini de pro ndis, built around the ated synthesis. Of the 17 variations in the ballet, about half pically English device of a ground bass, over which the cel- are on this recording. lo solo unfolds, starting at the bo om of the instrument, and e third act of the ballet is a journey through Woolf’s ascending out of our sight. e fi nal character we hear in dream-like narrative e Waves, and is prefaced by a reading this music is the ci of itself, represented by a fi eld of her last piece of writing, her profoundly moving suicide recording of Big Ben, a sound Virginia Woolf would have note. is “theme” of suicide connects to the Septimus epi- heard every day. sode in Act I, and so I wrote the music to echo that mate- Orlando, which forms the second part of the ballet, is rial, and it is once again structured around a ground bass. a novel of transformations, stretching across many locations e wave-like melodic contour in the material builds over and historical episodes. I immediately started to think about 20 minutes and incorporates a solo soprano, as if she were the similarities with variation form – the musical process submerged in the oceanic orchestral texture. where a recognisable theme is transformed and reordered to What a brilliant creative human being Virginia Woolf reveal new aspects of its character – so I chose this process was. It’s been extraordinary to have the chance to be sub- of variation as the basis of the Orlando music. merged in the ma ers that troubled her, the questions she e theme I chose for these variations is the well- wrestled with and the visionary quali of the answers she known fragment La Folia, which has been used by numer- discovered. ous composers since the middle of the 17th century, among Max Richter them Corelli, Marais, Lully, Vivaldi, Bach, Scarla i, Handel and Geminiani. However I wanted the pale e to be one which could only exist today; so in addition to variations for

6 Virginia Woolf’s suicide Dearest, note to her husband, 28 March 1941 I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that any one could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fi ght any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certain of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

7 Special thanks to my wife Yulia Mahr, to Wayne McGregor, to e Royal Ballet and to e Socie of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf. Recordings: StudioKino, Berlin, April 2015 (electronic music) AIR Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, London, September 2016 (chamber music) Studio Babelsberg, Potsdam, October 2016 (orchestra music) Produced by Max Richter Recorded by Geoff Foster (London), Nick Wollage (Potsdam) Assisted by Chris Barre (London), Falko Duczmal (Potsdam) Mixed by Nick Wollage, Jon Bailey, Max Richter Mastered by Mandy Parnell Executive Producer for Studio Richter Mahr: Yulia Mahr Executive Producer for : Christian Badzura Project Coordinator for Studio Richter Mahr: Rebecca Drake-Brockman Project Manager for Deutsche Grammophon: Anna-Lena Rodewald Artist Management: Steve Abbo All works composed by Max Richter and published by Mute Song Score preparation: Dave Foster Composer’s assistant: Henning Fuchs & © 2017 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin Cover Photo © plainpicture / Water Rights / Jeff Hornbaker Photos © Rhys Frampton (p. 2); © CL. / photocase.de (p. 3); © akg-images / Archive Photos (p. 4) Design: Mareike Walter

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8 Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting …

VIRGINIA WOOLF, FROM ORLANDO (1928)