Dominick Argento

Deux-Elles DominickDominick ArgentoArgento Shadow and Substance Howard Haskin tenor ominick Argento is generally considered Classical Contemporary Composition’, in respect season, is set in the early days of Hollywood and quaver accompaniment that just occasionally a vocal composer; he is one of the leading of Frederica von Stade’s recording of his song- examines the effects of fame and the immigrant’s may remind us of Balinese gamelan patterns. DUS composers of lyric opera and one of cycle Casa Guidi on the Reference Records label. experience in America. Very different is the treatment of Samuel the most successful, in terms of performances. He was elected to the American Academy of Daniel’s ‘Care-Charmer Sleep’, a depressive The three song-cycles on this disc give some Arts and Letters in 1979, and in 1997 the lifetime A man of wide literary tastes, during the 1970s poem memorably set by Peter Warlock and indications why this should be the case. appointment of Composer Laureate to the and 1980s Argento turned increasingly to the Havergal Brian, amongst others. The agitation Minnesota Orchestra was bestowed on him. composition of song-cycles. His major of Argento’s middle section is graphically Argento was born in York, Pennsylvania and productions in this form include Six Elizabethan expressive of the poet’s tormented emotions. studied at the Peabody Conservatory from 1947 Argento has composed copious orchestral and Songs (1958), Letters from Composers (1968) for Shakespeare’s marvellous ‘When icicles hang to 1954, where his teachers included Nicholas chamber music (notably the Variations for voice and guitar, To Be Sung Upon the Water (1973) by the wall’ is set as a kind of vigorous round- Nabokov, Henry Cowell and Hugo Weisgall; this orchestra The Mask of Night, 1965) but the bulk for voice, piano and clarinet, From the Diary of dance – a good remedy to keep out the cold. period was broken in 1951, when with the aid of of his output is vocal: either stage works, choral Virginia Woolf (1975), The Andree Expedition With its three-syllable cry, Argento’s ‘staring owl’ a Fulbright Fellowship he was able to complete pieces, or solo songs. His concern for the human (1983), Casa Guidi (1983) and A Few Words About in this song appears to be a screech (or young his studies at the Cherubini Conservatory in voice, with singing lines and ‘speaking’ melodies, Chekhov (1996) for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and tawny) owl rather than the more expected two- Florence with Luigi Dallapiccola. Argento went informs virtually all his music, whether piano. Throughout, his concern with the mean- syllable barn owl. on to graduate studies with Bernard Rogers, instrumental or vocal. (Argento is married to the ingful setting of words in terms of their syllabic Howard Hanson and Alan Hovhaness at the soprano Carolyn Bailey, who has premiered and semantic content, as well as their musical Plangent piano thirds in contrary motion, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY from many of his works.) He has written over a dozen intertwining and accouchement with the reminiscent perhaps of Aaron Copland, introduce 1955-57. Argento became music director of operas, often acting as his own librettist. Among accompanying instrument or instruments, a second Shakespeare setting, a moving Hilltop Opera in Baltimore; he also taught theory the best known of these are Christopher Sly marks him out as a song composer of rare treatment of ‘Come away, come away, Death’ all and composition at the Eastman School. He (1963), Postcard from Morocco (1970), The penetration and sensitivity. the more affecting for its sparse textural simplicity. twice more visited Italy on Guggenheim Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe (1975), A Water Bird A poem of shepherd lovers by Henry Constable, Fellowships, and completed his opera Colonel Talk (1981), Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night The Six Elizabethan Songs for voice and piano ‘Diaphenia’ is the brilliant scherzo of this collection, Jonathan the Saint there. In 1958, he had joined (1981), Casanova’s Homecoming (1985) and The seems to be Argento’s earliest song-cycle, and its bubbling 6/8 motion twice stilled by a highly the faculty of the Department of Music at the Aspern Papers (1988) – works which have been shows its composer as nothing if not ambitious. effective chordal refrain. The concluding number University of Minnesota, and after returning from featured in many opera houses across the US His chosen texts are all – ‘Diaphenia’, perhaps, sets Ben Jonson’s ‘Hymn’ to Diana, which Italy in 1961 he continued to teach there until and Europe. Argento’s close association with Sir apart – lyrics of immortal fame, mostly conceived Benjamin Britten made the bubbling hunting 1997, becoming Regents’ Professor of Music. He Tyrone Guthrie and Douglas Campbell, directors in their beginning as words for music, and since scherzo of his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings; now holds the title of Professor Emeritus. Among of the Minnesota Theatre Company in the later set many times by some of the greatest song- but in view of ‘Diaphenia’ Argento has structural other honours and awards, Argento received the 1960s, led to his composing incidental music for writers from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Thomas reasons, as well as that of his own individuality, 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his song-cycle several Guthrie productions, and also a ballad Nash’s ‘Spring, the Sweet Spring’ is already an to eschew fast music here. His tempo marking is From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. He has also opera, The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1967). His most acme of blithe, vernal lyricism, and Argento does Andante maestoso, as he acknowledges in music gained the Opera America Award for recent opera, The Dream of Valentino, a not attempt to set it against its nature, with a the hymnic gravity of Jonson’s poem, bringing Achievement, the 2004 Grammy for ‘Best commission from Washington Opera for its 1994 direct and elegant vocal line and a busy semi- the cycle to a serene close. - 1 - - 2 - Letters from Composers shows Argento spinning-wheel from Goethe’s Faust, Argento imply a narrative of a journey by boat. But there ‘Fair is the Swan’ is a liquid scherzo, and also a responding to texts of a very different kind: skilfully works in Schubert’s own setting of that is also a controlling presence: Schubert, whom duet – partly in strict canon – for voice and epistolary prose both casual and formal, infinitely very poem. we have already met in Letters from Composers. clarinet, the piano only appearing in the removed from the patterned symmetries of verse Schubert is directly evoked in the fifth song but concluding bars. ‘In Remembrance of Schubert’ and surely, in the writers’ wildest imaginings, J. S. Bach’s formal and stubborn epistle to the continually implicit in the expressive stance and, is a haunting barcarolle, this time for voice and never intended to be set to music. They are not Leipzig authorities insisting his proper fees is in not least, in the instrumentation for high voice, piano only. While the texture of the outer sections at all lyric effusions; they cover a gamut of matching mock-baroque style with vocal piano and clarinet (which mimics his Der Hirt auf hints at the style and registers of Schubert Lieder, emotions, and they are fascinating character- embellishments, turns and mordents, slipping in dem Felsen) as well as the title – which is English the recitative-like middle section spans the studies of the personalities who wrote them. And and out of reminiscences of several of Bach’s for Auf dem Wasser zu Singen, Schubert’s entire gamut of the keyboard in steeply rising Argento has chosen to accompany them with a lute and keyboard works. A pathetic (and Stolberg song of 1823. Perhaps Argento knew arpeggios. In ‘Hymn near the Rapids’ the voice’s guitar, used with the utmost resource and dramatic) late letter of the dying Debussy, that Schubert’s friend Franz Lachner, himself no hymn-like phrases in long values are contrasted virtuosity and complete understanding of the mingling his personal despair with references to mean song composer, had also had the idea of with the turbulent, churning figuration of piano instrument. The guitar suggests privacy, the war going on in Europe, is lightly arranging poems to suggest a journey by boat, and clarinet. Becoming steadily more intense intimacy, the writer of each letter musing to accompanied, largely in hallucinatory as in his Sängerfahrt to poems of Heine. and imploring, this elaborate song is perhaps the himself in a way that perhaps no piano harmonics. But a vigorous toccata with energetic cycle’s climax. Voice and piano are finally in accompaniment could convey. strummed chords perfectly expresses Puccini’s In fact the clarinettist is required to double on accord with the concluding cadential ‘Miserere desire to escape the confines of Paris and bass clarinet, lending an unusual, sepulchral Domini’. Chopin writes from Palma, Minorca: this hint is everything artifical, and return to the natural life quality to the sound-quality from time to time – enough for Argento to deploy a wide range of of the country and the sea. Finally Robert as at the opening of the first song, where the bass ‘The Lake at Evening’ begins with a clarinet ‘Spanish’ evocations in his guitar writing, while Schumann’s loving letter to his fiancée Clara clarinet echoes the piano and then liquidly cadenza and develops into a rhapsodic nocturne, spinning an intensely lyrical, dreamy line out of Wieck, written in the face of misfortune and the counterpoints the voice, which, once the clarinet the repeated echoing tones of the piano played the composer’s prose.

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