Fretwork with Iestyn Davies, Countertenor
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Sunday, November 3, 2019, 3pm Hertz Hall Fretwork with Iestyn Davies, countertenor Fretwork Asako Morikawa, Richard Boothby, Joanna Levine, Emily Ashton, Sam Stadlen, viols If Michael Nyman & Henry Purcell Michael NYMAN (b. 1944) No Time in Eternity (2016) Henry PURCELL (1659 –1695) Fantazy No. 7 in C minor, 19th June 1680 Fantazy No. 11 in G major, 19th August 1680 Music for a while (1679) NYMAN Music Aer a While (2018) PURCELL e Evening Hymn (1688) INTERMISSION NYMAN Balancing the Books (1999) If (1995) Why (1995) PURCELL Fantazy No. 6 in F major, 14th June 1680 Fantazy upon one note (1680) NYMAN e Self-Laudatory Hymn of Inanna and her Omnipotence (1992) This performance is made possible, in part, by Patron Sponsors the Hon. Marie Bertillion Collins and Mr. Leonard Collins. Major support provided by The Bernard Osher Foundation. Cal Performances’ 2019 –20 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. PROGRAM NOTES Michael Nyman at 75 Nyman has chosen to set. Herrick was highly Is there a contemporary composer whose music sensitive to music and a close friend of the Lawes is more immediately recognizable than Michael brothers, Henry and William. Nyman’s? I can’t think of one: the insistent osti - In 2017, Fretwork commissioned Nyman nanti; the bold, yet simply conceived harmony; (with funds generously donated by Mark Reed) the driving rhythms; the aggressive instrumen - to write a new instrumental work for the group, tation; the heavy bass-line—all have combined and he responded with Music Aer a While , to make Nyman’s music seem instantly famil - which is based on Purcell’s song, or more iar. He has been imitated endlessly, particularly particularly on its strikingly original bass-line, by composers for moving images—film, televi - with its insidious rising chromatics. It was sion, advertisements, and so on; yet these are premiered in Milton Court, in London’s Bar - pale imitations, not the real thing. bican Centre, in May 2018, just before Fretwork While Nyman might be known now more recorded it. for the music he wrote for Jane Campion’s e Evening Hymn is a setting of the poem award-winning film from 1993, e Piano , he by Bishop William Fuller, friend of the diarists initially shot to fame a decade earlier with the Pepys and Evelyn. e arrangement for viols music for Peter Greenaway’s e Draughtsman’s was made by Silas Wolston. e sound bass here Contract, set in 17th-century England. is moves to accommodate modulations to differ - lurid tale was filmed with striking originality, ent keys, as does that of Music for a while, which which Nyman mirrored with his music, most is from the incidental music to Dryden and Lee’s of it derived from one of England’s greatest translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus , revived in 1692. composers, Henry Purcell. Purcell’s music was Alecto is one of the Greek furies, with snakes for well known to Nyman, as he had studied under hair, whose work is to castigate mortals for their the great musicologist urston Dart at King’s moral crimes. College in London in the 1960s, and had then Some time during the 2000s, I came across produced the first modern edition of Purcell’s Nyman’s If , scored for piano and strings, and Catches in 1967. thought it could work for viols; I made an So it was a natural choice to combine Nyman arrangement and sent it to the composer, who and Purcell on this program. Purcell never approved. e calm simplicity of the harmonic composed vocal music with an accompaniment pattern and melody makes for a compelling of viols, but his magnificent set of Fantazias work, which expresses the child-like naivete of and In Nomines for viols demonstrated his the text. It was written, together with Why , to interest in the instrument; so it was but a short texts by Roger Pulvers as part of an animated step to realizing Purcell’s original bass-line and film by Seiya Araki, e Diary of Anne Frank . completing the harmonies with parts for four And then, having seen my arrangement, Ny - or five viols. man suggested I look at a work he had written Nyman’s No Time in Eternity was commis - for the Swingle Singers, Balancing the Books , sioned in 2016 by the French countertenor a wordless vocal work in eight parts. I arranged Paulin Bündgen and Ensemble Celadon, and this, but we didn’t find an opportunity to per - first performed by them in Lyon in March of form it until we were invited to take part in the that year. It is a setting of several poems by Minimalism Unwrapped festival at Kings Place the great 17th-century poet Robert Herrick. in London in 2015. All are from his Hesperides , published in 1648. We had previously commissioned Nyman in Herrick’s most famous verse is “To the Virgins 1992 to write a work for James Bowman and our to make much of time,” espousing the advice to ensemble for the Spitalfields Festival. Nyman seize the day, or carpe diem ; and we see similar described the remarkable chance encounter that sentiments in these epigrammatical works that led to the choice of text: PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES e text of the Self-Laudatory Hymn came to Britannica edition of Jacobean consort light while I was browsing among the book - music) and the finest book ever written on shelves of an Armenian acquaintance in Feb - English music, E nglish Chamber Music by ruary 1992. Opening, for no apparent reason, E.H. Meyer. a fat anthology entitled Ancient Near-Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament , edited Michael Nyman was born in Stratford, in the by James B. Pritchard, I found S.N. Kramer’s East End of London on March 23, 1944. In ad - translation of this hymn. I was immediately dition to his current work as a composer, he is taken with its tone of unashamed self- also a filmmaker, conductor, pianist, musicolo - con gratulation (very suitable, I thought, for gist, writer, and photographer. Nyman studied James Bowman’s voice) and its repetitive at the Royal Academy of Music and, following structure (very suitable for my music). his PhD studies with urston Dart, traveled to In conversation with another friend, I Romania to collect folk music. learned that Inanna was not an obscure god - dess known only to me and a few experts on While working as music critic for e Spec - Sumerian civilisation, but a central focus of tator , Nyman coined the term “minimalism” in that civilisation and a figure highly esteemed 1968. He also wrote for e New States man , e by feminists. In Kramer’s works: ‘Female Listener, and Studio Interna tional . He seminal deities were worshipped and adored all work on new music— Experimental Music: Cage though Sumerian history…but the goddess and Beyond —was published in 1974 and re - who outweighed, overshadowed, and out - cently was reprinted. lasted them all was a deity know to the Nyman’s preferred musical form is opera, Sumerians by the name of Inanna, ‘Queen of Heaven,’ and to the Semites, who lived in and he has written several notable works in this Sumer, by the name of Ishtar. Inanna played form: e Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, a greater role in myth, epic, and hymn than Facing Goya, and Many and Boy: Dada. any other deity, male or female.’ More recently, he has focused on composing In the Self-Laudatory Hymn, I have made soundtracks for silent films from the late 1920 s: no attempt to evoke Sumerian music (or Jean Vigo ’s À Propos de Nice , Sergei Eisenstein ’s music of any other period). e opportunity Battleship Potemkin, and new soundtracks for to work with the viols of Fretwork recalls my three Dziga Vertov films— Man with a Movie use of early instruments in the first Michael Nyman Band, which uses rebecs rather than Camera, e Eleventh Year, and A Sixth Part of viols; and also my studies in the 1960s with the World . urston Dart (and his memorable Musica —Richard Boothby ABOUT THE ARTISTS For the past three decades (the ensemble cele - Bainbridge, Poul Ruders, John Joubert, Duncan brated its 30th anniversary in 2016), Fretwork Drucem, and Nico Muhly. has explored the core repertory of great English e group now frequently presents programs consort music, from Taverner to Purcell, and consisting entirely of contemporary music. made classic recordings against which others Fretwork made its Carnegie Hall debut in are judged. February of 2010, and now tours the United In addition, the ensemble has become States most years. Also in 2010, the group cu - known as a pioneer of contemporary music for rated a week-long concert series at Kings Place viols, having commissioned over 40 new works in London’s Kings Cross area, culminating in from composers including Michael Nyman, the world premiere of Orlando Gough’s e George Benjamin, Sir John Tavener, Gavin World Encompassed , a 70-minute piece de - Bryars, Elvis Costello, Alexander Goehr, John scribing in musical terms Drake’s circumnavi - Woolrich, Orlando Gough, Fabrice Fitch, Peter gation of the globe in 1577 –80. Sculthorpe, Sally Beamish, Tan Dun, Barry In 2011, the National Centre for Early Music, Guy, Andrew Keeling, ea Musgrave, Simon in collaboration with the BBC, hosted a com - ABOUT THE ARTISTS petition for young composers to create a four- Farinelli and the King opposite Mark Rylance, minute piece for Fretwork. e group work- a Globe eatre production that had successful shopped the shortlisted pieces at the NCEM in runs on the West End and Broadway.