FLAX and FIRE S O N G S O F D E V O T I O N

FLAX AND FIRE SONGS OF DEVOTION Stuart Jackson, tenor Jocelyn Freeman, piano FLAX AND FIRE Songs of Devotion Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) 1 Purcell realisation: ‘Man is for the woman made’ (1947, Motteux) 1.03 2 Canticle 1 ‘My Beloved is Mine’, Op.40 (1947, Quarles) 7.41 3 Um Mitternacht (c.1960, Goethe) 3.50 Hugo Wolf (1860-1903) 4 Peregrina 1, No.33 from Mörike-Lieder (1888, Mörike) 2.01 5 An die Geliebte, No.32 from Mörike-Lieder (1888, Mörike) 3.26 6 Verschwiegene Liebe, No.3 from Eichendorff-Lieder (1889, Eichendorff) 2.29 7 Nimmersatte Liebe, No.9 from Mörike-Lieder (1888, Mörike) 2.10 Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Tri Sonetti del Petrarca, S270a (1842-46) 8 i Pace non trovo 6.29 9 ii Benedetto sia ‘l giorno 6.35 10 iii I vidi in terra 6.39 Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 11 Mein schöner Stern!, Op.101 No.4 from Minnespiel (1849, Rückert) 2.52 12 Widmung, Op.25 No.1 from Myrthen (1840, Rückert) 2.28 13 Stirb’, Lieb’ und Freud!, Op.35 No.2 from Kernerlieder (1840, Kerner) 5.31 14 Geisternähe, Op.77 No.3 from Lieder und Gesänge, iii (1850, Halm) 2.19 William Denis Browne (1888-1915) 15 To Gratiana dancing and singing (1913, Lovelace) 4.35 Total time 60.12 Stuart Jackson, tenor Jocelyn Freeman, piano 2 Flax & Fire is a recital of songs centred around devotion and passion, with the title inspired by a line from Britten’s Canticle 1, “For I was flax and he was flames of fire”. All the songs encompass a profound feeling of love. In many songs this essence is so intense that it leads to transformation or idolisation, or the infatuation is so strong that we might question the perspective of the object of these affections. As with all matters of the heart there are numerous undercurrents and layers within the immense affection. Flax & Fire provided us with a chance to explore these textures in detail. The opening three Britten songs illustrate a firm sense of belonging, combined with minutiae of inner conflict. Conflict increases to a near-crippling sense of distancing in Mein schöner Stern, Geisternähe and Stirb’, Lieb’ und Freud’!, and to counterbalance this we include several musical antitheses, such as Widmung and Nimmersatte Liebe. The near-religious fervour of Liszt’s centrally-placed sonnets epitomises passionate courtship, whilst To Gratiana dancing and singing concludes the journey with arresting adoration. Jocelyn Freeman, 2020 Benjamin Britten has been described as the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell, and although a substantial passage of time separates the two, they shared similar musical preoccupations and principles. Britten said of Purcell: “He was open to many influences, he was a practical composer, he wrote for many different occasions... all that I find immensely sympathetic. Above all, I love his setting of words. I had never realised before I first met Purcell’s music that words could be set with such ingenuity, with such colour.” In 1959, Britten wrote of the warm response he and his partner, tenor Peter Pears, received for their performances of Purcell: “In practically every one of our concerts, given the length of three continents over the last twenty years, Peter Pears and I have included a group of Purcell’s songs… It is pleasant to get 3 cheers at the end of Purcell’s ‘Alleluia’ in the home of Schubert and Wolf, requests for a repeat of ‘Man is for the woman made’ in the birthplace of Mozart… and an impressive silence as the last bars of ‘Job’s Curse’ die away in Düsseldorf, where Schumann spent many years.” On the challenge of realising Purcell’s music, Britten explained that “the realiser must soak himself in the composer’s idiom in order to provide natural Purcellian harmonies for the melodies. Nor must he be afraid of those very Purcellian qualities of clarity, strangeness, tenderness and attack.” Man is for the woman made was realised by Britten in 1947, and his sensitivity to Motteux’s text is reflected in the subtly different settings of each verse: “In each successive verse of ‘Man is for the woman made’ I have invented new figuration to match the increasing dottiness of the words.” Purcell’s influence is apparent in Britten’sCanticle I, ‘My Beloved is Mine’, also dating from 1947 and described by Pears in 1952 as Britten’s finest vocal work to date. In 1963, Britten explained that: “The First Canticle was a new invention in a sense although it was certainly modelled on the Purcell Divine Hymns; but few people knew their Purcell well enough to realise that.” While he was writing the work, Britten recorded: “My Canticle goes nicely now & I’m in love with the form”. He and Pears first performed it on 1 November 1947 at a memorial concert for the Rev. Dick Sheppard, one of the founders of the Peace Pledge Union. The 17th-century text, by Quarles, is partly derived from the Song of Solomon, and the music reflects the imagery of two streams overlapping until they merge, weathering a stormy central section but ending as one. Britten contemplated several Goethe settings but only completed one, in 1960: Um Mitternacht. Spare piano chords accentuate a haunting vocal line, tracing a man’s journey from a small boy marvelling at the stars to a grown man drinking in the beauty of his beloved with the same sense of wonder. Hugo Wolf first became entranced by the words of Mörike in 1886, after which he set over 50 of the poet’s texts during a great surge of creativity. He wrote in February 1888: “I have just put a new song down on paper. A divine song, I 4 tell you! Quite divinely marvellous! … I feel my cheeks glowing like molten iron with excitement, and this state of inspiration is more an exquisite torment to me than pure pleasure”. He went on: “What will the future unfold for me? … Have I a calling? Am I really one of the chosen? … That would be a pretty kettle of fish”. Mörike wrote five ‘Peregrina’ poems in the wake of an anguished and ultimately doomed relationship. As Wolf explained in a letter of 1890, whilst touring Swabia in Germany or “Mörike country” as he called it, he did not fully understand three of the poems and so opted to set two as a pair of linked songs, Peregrina I and II. Both were completed by the end of April 1888, and became Nos. 33 and 34 of Wolf’s substantial Mörike-Lieder cycle. Peregrina I sets poetry of deep longing, Wolf’s music reflecting its nuances with subtle harmonic shifts in the piano and a caressing, increasingly passionate vocal line. An die Geliebte comes just before Peregrina I in the Mörike-Lieder and its ecstatic quality is matched by Wolf’s sensual music, the piano’s rippling textures emulating the poem’s vivid imagery: “The springs of fate ripple in melody”. The ardent Nimmersatte Liebe is the ninth in the cycle, heard here alongside Verschwiegene Liebe, to words by Eichendorff. Wolf frequently drew inspiration from Eichendorff’s words and had attempted to set this serenely beautiful poem once before, finally succeeding while staying in Vienna. The result is a song of exquisite tenderness; it became the third of the 20 Eichendorff-Lieder of 1889. On 6 April 1883, Wolf met Franz Liszt and played him some of his songs; Liszt responded by hugging him and offering words of encouragement. Wolf was profoundly influenced by Liszt’s music, although he tempered profuse praise with the argument that Liszt’s output was often “more intellectual than deeply felt”. Liszt’s three-volume collection of piano pieces, the Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), traces the composer’s emotional journey through key years of his life. Book II, ‘Italy’, is contemplative in tone, and includes Liszt’s responses to great texts such as Dante’s Divine Comedy and Petrarch’s Sonnet 104, one of three of Petrarch’s poems set by Liszt in a triptych of songs, the Tri Sonetti del 5 Petrarca. Petrarch’s sonnets about his unrequited love for a woman named Laura fascinated Liszt for many years, and the Tri Sonetti del Petrarca, S270a, were composed between 1838 and 1842, originally for high voice. A piano transcription of the songs was published in 1846, and Liszt later made substantial revisions to produce a low voice version in the 1860s, published in 1883. We hear the original version. Liszt’s setting of Petrarch’s Sonnet 104 opens with a recitative-like introduction followed by an aria of inflamed passion, conveying Petrarch’s account of the extremities of love with daring harmonies and operatic vocal writing. The second song, Benedetto sia ‘l giorno (‘Blessed be the day’) articulates Petrarch’s celebration of the first time he saw Laura, with Liszt’s tonal shifts mirroring the poet’s additions to his list of blessings. The set concludes with Liszt’s dreamy treatment of a sonnet in which Petrarch’s love finds echoes in the beauty of Nature. Clara Wieck heard Liszt performing in 1838 and wrote: “He can be compared to no other player … he arouses fright and astonishment. He is an original”. Two years later, Robert Schumann wrote to Clara, by then his fiancée: “Oh Clara, what bliss it is to write songs, I can’t tell you how easy it has become for me... it is music of an entirely different kind, which doesn’t have to pass through the fingers – far more melodious and direct.” Schumann was alluding to his recent shift away from composing exclusively for the piano.

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