American Polyphony
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BARBER BERNSTEIN COPLAND THOMPSON PPOLYPHONYO LYPHON Y SSTEPHENT EPHEN LAYTONLAYTON BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN RANDALL THOMPSON (1899-1984) STEINCOP 1 LANDTHOM Alleluia [6'12] PSONBARB E RBERNST SAMUEL BARBER (1910-1981) EINCOPLA 2 Agnus Dei [9'07] NDTHOMPS ONBA R BER Reincarnations Op 16 [9'36] BERNSTEI 3 Mary Hynes [2'23] NCOPLAND THOMPSON 4 Anthony O’Daly [3'07] BARBERBE 5 The coolin’ [4'06] RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA PPOLYPHONYOLYPHONY LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) RBERBER N Missa brevis [11'50] with ROBERT MILLETT percussion STEINCOP 6 LANDTHOM Kyrie [1'10] PSONBARB 7 Gloria [2'48] E R BERNST 8 Sanctus [1'22] E I NCOPLA SSTEPHENTEPHEN 9 NDTHOMPS Benedictus [1'21] ONBARBER bl Agnus Dei [2'40] BERNSTEI LAYTON bm NCOPLAND LAYTON Dona nobis pacem [2'28] THOMPSON BARBERB E AARON COPLAND (1900-1990) RNSTEINC Four Motets [11'29] OPLANDTH OMPSONBA bn Help us, O Lord [2'57] RBERBERN bo Thou, O Jehovah, abideth forever [2'23] STEINCOP bp LANDTHOM Have mercy on us, O my Lord [4'09] PSONBARB bq Sing ye praises to our king [1'59] ERBERNST EINCOPLA SAMUEL BARBER ND T HOMPS ONBARBER br Twelfth Night Op 42 No 1 [4'48] BERNSTEI bs NCOPLAND To be sung on the water Op 42 No 2 [2'54] THOMPSON bt A nun takes the veil ‘Heaven-haven’ Op 13 No 1 [2'43] BARBERBE bu RNSTEINC The virgin martyrs Op 8 No 1 women’s voices [3'34] OPLA N DTH cl Let down the bars, O death Op 8 No 2 [2'35] OMPSONBA RBERBERN STEINCOP RANDALL THOMPSON LAND2THOM cm Fare Well [9'19] PSONBARB ERBERNST BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN STEINCOP LANDTHOM PSONBARB E RBERNST EINCOPLA NDTHOMPS ONBA R BER BERNSTEI NCOPLAND THOMPSON BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBER N CONTENTS STEINCOP LANDTHOM PSONBARB E R BERNST E I NCOPLA NDTHOMPS ENGLISH page 4 ONBARBER BERNSTEI Sung texts and translation page 9 NCOPLAND THOMPSON BARBERB E RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN STEINCOP LANDTHOM PSONBARB ERBERNST EINCOPLA ND T HOMPS ONBARBER BERNSTEI NCOPLAND THOMPSON BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLA N DTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN STEINCOP LAND3THOM PSONBARB ERBERNST BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN AMUEL BARBER’S AUNT, Louise Homer, was a fine most beautiful woman of the century, is eloquently pro - STEINCOP LANDTHOM contralto, who sang at New York’s Metropolitan claimed. With the words ‘Lovely and airy the view from the PSONBARB SOpera for nineteen successive seasons. She was hill’, Barber’s imitative, più tranquillo transition smoothly E RBERNST married to a composer primarily of songs, Sydney Homer, reflects the shift of mood; still ecstatic, the breathlessness EINCOPLA whose mentoring of his nephew-by-marriage was intense gone, and yet with a closing reference, at ‘The blossom of NDTHOMPS ONBA R BER and long-lasting. The teenage student at Philadelphia’s branches’, to the melodic contour of the opening. BERNSTEI Curtis Institute had a fine baritone voice himself, and from Lovestruck warmth gives way to the stark anger and NCOPLAND an early age was rarely without a volume of poetry by his desperation of grief in the second Reincarnations setting, THOMPSON BARBERBE side. Anthony O’Daly. Intoning like a funeral bell throughout— RNSTEINC It is scarcely a surprise, then, that Barber’s output is or at least until the final page’s fortissimo climax—is the OPLANDTH so richly populated with music for the human voice. The obsessive repetition of the name ‘Anthony’, first of all in the OMPSONBA Adagio for strings may be the piece with which he achieved basses, later in all voice parts, always on the note E. Closely RBERBER N STEINCOP mass recognition; but his several dozen songs, choral works imitative writing attaches to this ‘Anthony’ pedal note, and LANDTHOM and three operas make up about half of his overall output becomes progressively more distressed until the tutti PSONBARB and are the ground source of his lyrical gift. ‘Anthony’ climax. Anthony O’Daly, an activist in County E R BERNST E I NCOPLA Barber’s maternal heritage, going back several Galway fighting the cause of oppressed tenant farmers, was NDTHOMPS generations, was Anglo-Scottish-Irish, and the composer caught and hanged in 1820 for unproven charges of ONBARBER connected early on with the Irish lyric tradition. Later, he attempted murder. Raftery may have witnessed the hanging BERNSTEI would set a number of poems by Joyce and Yeats, together himself. NCOPLAND THOMPSON with the ancient, anonymous Irish texts of the Hermit James Stephens wrote of The coolin’ (which translates BARBERB E Songs, Op 29, but an early influence was James Stephens as ‘The fair-haired one’): ‘I sought to represent that state RNSTEINC (1880–1950). In turn, it was Stephens’ interest in the re- which is almost entirely a condition of dream, wherein the OPLANDTH telling of Irish myths and fairy tales that brought Barber to passion of love has almost overreached itself and is sinking OMPSONBA RBERBERN the Gaelic poet Antoine Ó Raifteirí (or Reachtabhra, or, more into a motionless languor.’ Barber’s tender, lilting setting STEINCOP commonly in English, Raftery, 1784–1835), known as the captures this (almost) ‘motionless languor’ with a delightful LANDTHOM last of the wandering bards. Raftery’s verse was given new sense of timeless pastoral—simple lives and simple PSONBARB ERBERNST life, through translation and elaboration, in James Stephens’ pleasures. EINCOPLA 1918 volume Reincarnations, and there is no better The time bomb of Barber’s melancholy—set to darken ND T HOMPS illustration of Barber’s masterful responsiveness to text than his later years in depressive alcoholism—would not have ONBARBER in his three Reincarnations settings from 1939–40. obviously resided alongside his privileged upbringing, BERNSTEI NCOPLAND In Mary Hynes, Barber perfectly captures the urgency good looks, precocious talent and early establishment of THOMPSON and breathless excitement of passionate love (‘She is the sky his lifelong relationship with fellow composer Gian Carlo BARBERBE of the sun, She is the dart Of love, She is the love of my Menotti. But it was already sufficiently present to produce, RNSTEINC heart’). With the sprung start, on the second beat of the bar, at the age of twenty-six, a string quartet movement of the OPLA N DTH OMPSONBA and the darting entries of different vocal lines within shifting deepest sadness, an Adagio that in its string orchestral RBERBERN metres, the poet’s admiration of Mary Hynes, said to be the version has become the unofficial national anthem of STEINCOP LAND4THOM PSONBARB ERBERNST BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN the Agnus Dei, works superbly too. The melodic contours fit STEINCOP LANDTHOM like a glove for voices, unlike similar, more recent attempts PSONBARB to choral-ize the more intrinsically instrumental lines of E RBERNST Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ with the Lux aeterna and Requiem EINCOPLA aeternam texts. NDTHOMPS ONBA R BER Just prior to the creation of the string quartet, in 1935– BERNSTEI 6, Barber wrote two quite different a cappella settings that NCOPLAND formed his Op 8. The virgin martyrs, a setting from Helen THOMPSON BARBERBE Waddell’s translation of Sigebert of Gembloux, is a charming RNSTEINC motet for four-part female voices, motivically and harmoni - OPLANDTH cally subtle. Let down the bars, O death is an intense, OMPSONBA expressive miniature, the poem by Emily Dickinson. In a RBERBER N STEINCOP letter in 1936, Barber declared: ‘I wrote a little chorus the LANDTHOM other morning, quite good, it will be alright for someone’s PSONBARB funeral.’ Forty-five years later, in early 1981, it was E R BERNST E I NCOPLA presumably more than alright for Barber’s own funeral and NDTHOMPS subsequent memorial service—a piece carefully prescribed ONBARBER in advance by the composer himself, alongside Dover BERNSTEI Beach, Summer Music for wind quintet and some organ NCOPLAND THOMPSON music by Barber’s idol, J S Bach. BARBERB E Some years after their composition in the late 1930s, RNSTEINC Barber was encouraged to arrange two of his four songs, OPLANDTH Op 13, for choir, and these were published in 1961. One of OMPSONBA RBERBERN them was Sure on this shining night, a setting of James Agee STEINCOP (not recorded here), and the other was Gerard Manley LANDTHOM Hopkins’ A nun takes the veil ‘Heaven-haven’ (Barber PSONBARB ERBERNST reversed Hopkins’ title). The sustained solo line and spread EINCOPLA piano chords are transformed into a largely homophonic ND T HOMPS SAMUEL BARBER setting, one of great poise and reflection. ONBARBER Barber’s prodigious flow of youthful composition slowed BERNSTEI NCOPLAND mourning in the United States, far-outstripping any other in later years, and the overwhelmingly poor reception of his THOMPSON piece in a 2004 BBC Radio 4 poll for the ‘saddest music third opera, Anthony and Cleopatra, written for the opening BARBERBE in the world’. Not only has it been the most successful, of New York’s new Metropolitan Opera in 1966, affected him RNSTEINC even improving, of transfers from string quartet to string greatly. But two years later he was on top form for what OPLA N DTH OMPSONBA orchestra; Barber’s own choral arrangement of 1967, turned out to be his last two a cappella works, the Op 42 RBERBERN tracking the sinuous, stepwise string lines to the words of pairing of Laurie Lee’s Twelfth Night and Louise Bogan’s STEINCOP LAND5THOM PSONBARB ERBERNST BARBERBE RNSTEINC OPLANDTH OMPSONBA RBERBERN To be sung on the water. The Laurie Lee setting is hugely STEINCOP LANDTHOM atmospheric, with expertly shaded dynamics and exquisitely PSONBARB placed chord progressions, while the Bogan is characterized E RBERNST by a constant, lilting motif passing between upper and lower EINCOPLA voices, suggestive of water-borne motion and the oar’s blade, NDTHOMPS ONBA R BER ‘Dipping the stream once more’.