Lament 163

L'amour de loin

Saariaho's (2000) presents an operatic rendition of the49 modernist lament. In the Baroque, the genre was at home on the stage. With its return there in Saariaho's work, it proves to be still comfortable in the theater, but it takes on a different expressive form. The opera draws upon the life, or legend, of the troubadour Jaufre Rudel, whose songs idealize a "distant" love, that of a woman who the poet is never to meet. Unlike his historical counterpart, the operatic Jaufre, with the help of a mysterious Pilgrim, sets out to see her. During the long sea journey, he grows anxious about the encounter and sings a lament in which he fears that meeting her will mar the purity of their love and lead to doom (Act IV, scene iii). The libretto calls Jaufre's lament a "complainte." The French genre belongs to the larger medieval planctus family. Troubadours did perform complaintes and other lament-type pieces, but no song in the genre by Jaufre survives. so The complainte as a genre has survived, but primarily as a historical relic, a song more read about than heard. As such, it does not offer a recognizable lament voice, unlike the Baroque passacaglia, a more alive and familiar relic. Saariaho, though, uses the genre to fashion a 47 The opening directions read "Lamentoso - disperato, con moto. Nicht zu schnell, aber wild, gehetzt, ungeduldig." 48 An extended analytical discussion of the entire piece can be found in Richard Toop,

"Stele-A Gravestone as End or Beginning? Gyiirgy Kurtag's Long March toward the Orchestra," Contemporary Music Review, 20, nos. 2 and 3 (2001 ), 129-49. 49 Saariaho has evoked the lament in other works, including "Miranda's Lament" and "Mort" (from Oltra Mar). so In an index of planctus-type works (including the complainte), Janthia Yearley lists 52 surviving works in Proven al, none by Jaufre. Yearley, "A Bibliography of Planctus in Latin, Provenpl, French, German, English, Italian, Catalan and Galician-Portuguese from the Time of Bede to the Early Fifteenth Century," Journal ofthe Plainsong and Medieval Music Society 4 (I 981), 12-52. 164 Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

voice suitable to a modern lament, one which harkens back to its medieval inspiration. The complainte, like many types of medieval chanson, builds5 1 upon a group of melodic phrases, which are arranged in a specific order, one coor- dinated with the poetic structure (AAB, ABAC, for instance). Saariaho crafts three melodic phrases (A, B, C) and links them together in a struc- tural chain longer and more intricate than that found in the Middle Ages: ABABCACACAC. The key point is not that Saariaho departs from a specific medieval form but that she adheres to the type of repetitions defining those forms. The consistent, narrow melodic repetition heard52 in the aria is rare in the composer's music, suggesting that she was using the approach to connect to the complainte, or medieval song in general. It is a loose con- nection, though, as the chromatic melodies belong to the modernist period. The three phrases (A, B, C) are all built around dyads a fifth apart, with each of the pairs being presented in a melodic sequence made up largely of semitones and tritones (Ex. 4.8). Phrase A features three melodic fifths (c-g, fU-cU', g-d') set in an ascending pattern of tritone and half step, creating a collection in which the first three notes and the last three form the same pitch-class set (3-5). In some statements ofthe phrase, Saariaho approaches the c with a Bq leading tone, thereby creating one more fifth in the collection (B-fU). Phrases Band C follow a different design (with the latter being an exact statement ofthe former transposed up a half step). Both present pairs of fifths a half-step apart. Some statements lift the lower two notes (cU-d, d-eb) an octave higher to extend the melodic range. When all three figures are combined, we can see that the pitches of the B and C phrases fill in the tritones ofA, leaving only two half-steps unstated in each tritone span (e-f, b-c', which also form pairs of fifths). Whereas the chromatic intervals are more the stuff of the modernist lament than of the medieval complainte, the incessant repetition of the phrases accords with both. Melodic repetition plays a prominent role in many lament repertoires. As seen in the Baroque basso ostinato, it can be a symbol of unending sorrow. At the same time, it can be a structural con- straint. Grief becomes locked in the phrases. Confined there, it can neither fly off in different directions with each emotional outburst nor suddenly take a new form; rather, it must submit to the steady course of repetition, just as mourning adheres to the ceremony of a ritual. In Saariaho's lament, 51 On formal structures in troubadour music, see Elizabeth Aubrey, The Music of the Troubadours (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 132-97. " 52 Saariaho does successively repeat melodic phrases in a loose way, as heard in the "concerto type pieces such as ... a la fumee and Amers, but these works do not feature the involved form structures built around consistent repetitions as used in the aria. Lament 165

Ex. 4.8 Saariaho, L'amour de loin, Act IV, scene iii Libretto by Amin Maalouf. Music by Kaija Saariaho. Libretto © Copyright 2000 Amin Maalouf. Rights licensed to Chester Music Limited, London WIT 3LJ. Music © Copyright 2000 Chester Music Limited, London WIT 3LJ. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission

Jaufre channels his despair into the three phrases, using the restatements to intensify a deepening dread. The repetitions also hold his sorrow back from growing excessive, but only to a certain point. The dynamics of transgres- sion and transformation eventually disrupt the continuity of the structural repetition and lead the complainte into an outburst. Before the climax of the lament, there is already violence and strain. The scene opens with a storm at sea, which inspires both the sorrow behind the lament and the melody of Jaufre's song. Saariaho evokes the churning 166 Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

clouds and ocean with a frenzied dense orchestral cluster. Over a pedal bb, most of the orchestra plays driving sixteenth-note phrases. Each division of the beat creates a complete or near-complete chromatic cluster. From the vertical to the linear, the individual instruments present repeated chro- matic lines, many of them featuring two- or three-note flecks heard in the lament phrases. In the wake of the tempest, Jaufre begins his complainte with the A phrase (m. 391) only to be interrupted by a chorus of sailors, who add to the medieval flavor with a melody harmonized in fourths and fifths. 53 He resumes the lament and once again stops, this time to convey to the Pilgrim his fears that his beloved Countess may have heard that he has set out on a journey to find her. He voices his anxieties with the C phrase and she responds with the same phrase, offering him little comfort (mm. 441-83). After the last interruption, Jaufre extends the complainte, making his way through the intricate melodic form (ABABCACACAC) (mm. 485-573 ). For most of the aria, the structural repetition withstands the pressing despair. The phrases, in terms ofrange and interval patterns, remain relatively intact. In the last four statements of the A and C phrases, though, the increasingly fraught Jaufre pushes past the upper range of the phrase and hits an fU'. The expressive impact created by the end of the lament derives not so much from the C phrase being breached, but from the presence of the C phrase at this point. Its return creates a moment of transgression. The phrase has been associated with the otherworldly in two previous appearances, during the Pilgrim's description of angels bearing mysterious messages and at the moment Jaufre conjures up the voice of a genie (mm. 508-10). When Jaufre picks up the phrase at the conclusion of the aria, he builds upon this association and adds to it suggestions of death. In his final cries, he has visions of reaching out to the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden and being burned by an "incandescent star." As heard in some lament traditions,

he has slipped beyond the everyday54 world and entered an unknown realm of mystery and death. Lament once again stretches a tether between our world and some next realm. The spiritual, emotional transgression sets up a culminating musical transformation. As soon as Jaufre finishes the aria, the opening storm returns. The orchestra releases the turbulent texture and burst of indi- vidual lines heard at the beginning of the scene. As mentioned earlier, some of the lines in the opening sonic mass draw upon lament phrases, a connection suggesting that Jaufre's complainte has been born from a storm 53 This analysis does not have the time to focus on the orchestral accompaniment of the lament, other than to note that it consists of individual melodic lines many of which feature motives from the lament phrases. 54 Kligman, The Wedding of the Dead. Lament 167

and will eventually become one. That the lament and storm stand beside each other in the same scene is worthy of note. Both serve as distinct num- bers in eighteenth-century opera, where they never meet, being dramatically and musically so removed55 from each other. Storms usually inspire either prayers for or celebrations ofdeliverance from nature's wrath; laments most often follow death. At the very beginning of the twenty-first century, the two meet and merge. The transformation from storm to lament and back to storm does not signify a new sort of operatic dramaturgy; rather, it puts into stark terms the late modernist understanding of the lament. The genre stirs expressive turmoil and force. In other words, it becomes a storm. Transfor- mations are to be expected in a lament, but a meteorological metamorphosis is fantastic even by the standards of the genre. The final storm in Saariaho's opera matches the violent endings in the Ligeti and Kurtag works. All three pieces escalate an expressive momentum that pushes beyond the strictness and continuity of the forms established early on. The works not only violate those structures but also stress the genre of the lament to such a degree that it takes on new, contorted forms, like the "drum" and "echo chamber" at the close of Ligeti's movement, the repeated acoustic violence in Kurtag's composition, and the tempest in Saariaho's. The dramatic outcomes in each piece say much about the types of direct expressive statements that composers since the 1980s have sought. Searching for veins of expression suitable for this moment in the history of modernism, some composers settled on outright intensity, a power born from and surpassing that of the lament.

55 Two examples include Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride and Mozart's Idomeneo. In the former, the storm that swells up in the Overture leads to supplications for delivery from the tempest. In the latter, those at sea and on shore pray to Neptune to end the storm.