Fine Print Weakness was recorded April 4–6, 2013. Macha was recorded on May 30, 2012. Ocean sounds were recorded in June 2012 at The Point, Ingonish, Nova Scotia (thanks to Rhodena MacLeod and family); and at Burton’s Sunset Oasis, Bay St. Lawrence, Nova Scotia (thanks to Melvin and Debbie Burton). A 2009 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters provided the musicians’ fees for the recording of Weakness, and the Princeton University Council on the Humanities David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project made possible Riley Lee’s residency in 2012. Additional support for publication was provided by the Princeton University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Barr Ferree Foundation Publication Fund. Engineered by Andrés Villalta. Edited by Barbara White. Weakness produced by Ned Rothenberg. Macham C owa n Macha produced by Barbara White. A St Ory by To Weakness rbArA White Speaking and stone percussion directed by An Oper A by Ba Mark DeChiazza and Barbara White. Photographs by Barbara White. All texts and music copyright the authors. www.albanyrecords.com TROY1441 albany records u.s. 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 albany records u.k. box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2013 albany records made in the usa ddd waRning: cOpyrighT subsisTs in all Recordings issued undeR This label. Track Listing Weakness 6 Macha [12:13] Music and libretto by barbara white Written and performed by Tom cowan Sound Design by Barbara White with Andrés Villalta Sound Design by Barbara White with Andrés Villalta 1 Arrival [14:11] Rose Marie McSweeney, penny whistle, bamboo flute, irish flute, clarinet, bass clarinet 2 Departure [7:31] Greg Silver, fiddle 3 Betrayals [7:53] Charles MacDonald, guitar fixed electronic media 4 Ordeal [8:25] Konrad Kaczmarek, 5 Beyond [8:39] Additional contributions by electric guitar Sarah Davis, soprano (macha) Taylor Levine, tin whistle Douglas Gillespie, speaker (crunnchu) Paul Davis, guitar Riley Lee, bamboo flute Robert “Boomer” MacDonald, voix fantôme Barbara White, clarinet and bass clarinet Aurore Bruyère D’Argent, Taylor Levine, electric guitar Dominic Donato, percussion Michael Pratt, conductor and speaker (king) Ned Rothenberg, assistant conductor Crowd (speaking and stone percussion): Millicent Kate Brigaud Lisa Carlucci | Kristin Clotfelter | Kate Knodel Franco Paoletti | Livia Paoletti | John Russell Katie Welsh Weakness: Synopsis Scene 4. Ordeal Ordeal—Or, Sacrificial Dance • Vow of the Empty Well Scene 1. Arrival In front of the King, the crowd, and Crunnchu, Macha races the king’s horses. She wins and collapses, Crunnchu • Macha • Culinary Arts • Breath and Skin spent, at the very moment of her triumph. In a third and final vow, she detaches from her body, her Lover and Loved One, Touch and Tumble • Vow of the First Sip • Tell lover, and the mortal world. Crunnchu, alone, goes about his day. Macha, a visitor from the Otherworld, appears and observes him with curiosity and hunger. He spies her and desires her too. Without a word, she sets about Scene 5. Beyond making dinner. They eat, approach one another, and become intimate—all without speaking. Revision • Beyond—Or, Five Streams and the Center Pool Afterward, Macha sings the first of three vows to her lover. Then, in her identity as a goddess from The goddess speaks from beyond time, describing the aftermath of her adventure with humankind. a time beyond time, she narrates all that has just happened. She corrects the record on her reputation: while “the people” (including most who have told her story since) maintain that she cursed them for failing her, she points out that in their cowardice, they Scene 2. Departure themselves shaped their own future of isolation and incapacity. Back in her Otherworld, again beyond Hawk and Breeze, Boat and Sea • Vow of the Overflowing Well time, she sings: Recollect • Plea for Restraint They have been living together contentedly for some time. Alone, Macha performs a solitary ritual—the I am mist in the palm of the dawn; mystifying and mesmerizing ceremony of an embodied goddess. Returning to Crunnchu, she sings I am hawk and breeze, boat and sea; another vow. Then Crunnchu is called away to the Great Assembly. Macha delivers the first of three I am ebbing tide and returning wave . pleas, entreating him not to go, and when he persists, she urges him to keep silent about her and about their relationship. He departs. I am shelter, and I am storm; I am your first cry and your last breath; Scene 3. Betrayals I am lover and loved one, mother and child, stallion and mare; Clear Seeing • Outburst • Plea for Mercy I am the harper, the shuddering string, the silence . Plea for Compassion—Or, The Indictment Aria Macha, at home, clairvoyant, sees Crunnchu arrive at the Great Assembly: amidst an excited crowd, I am water, well, and thirsty mouth, marveling at the king’s horses, he loses himself and exclaims, “My wife can run faster than the five streams and the center pool. king’s horses!” The king, incensed, orders Macha brought to him and demands that she race One year enchanted in a foam of water . his horses. Macha delivers two more pleas, imploring the king and then the crowd for mercy and compassion; she is met with mute refusal from the king and from all present. Hag and hero, honored foe; kind of première itself. Is it mine? Yes, in a way it is. But the full story of Macha can only live in that spark of hardness, nameless, known. Otherworld of myth and mystery that is beyond us, that Otherworld we are only allowed to glimpse, and Radiant insult, brutal peace; about which we must remain silent until that World itself tells us it is time to speak. shadow’s skin, reknitted. Empty ocean, fire sings; blurred lines break: patient thunder, stone flows. On Weakness and Transgression Seven winds, nine waves, ten thousand stars, one sky, no end. by andrea Mazzariello Now, again, always, beyond, here, once more … Silence, appropriately and paradoxically, initiates the piece. A bed of sound emerges, crescendos, and then seems to draw life out of a single instrument. Long low tones, punctuated by occasional adorn- ment, take the foreground. The sonic palette expands as the player notes the boundaries of her allotted The story of Macha space, tethered to a resting tone but pushing ever upward, composure giving way to expressivity before by Tom cowan resting again. Then multiplying, other voices activated and entwined. The story of Macha has intrigued me for many years. It has also repulsed me for many years. I’ve been These seem to be the terms: stretch the cable linking silence to utterance to music and then, intrigued by the enchantment of a beautiful woman from the Otherworld who chooses a mortal man just before it snaps into resplendent color, rest again. We’ll land on our feet, we think, we’ll return to to be her husband, by the love she brings to enrich his life and increase his prosperity, by the strange a static point, breath or tone, and then stretch again until, this time, the music will open up to us, to requirement she puts on him never to mention that she exists, and by her power to run with horses. being consumed, to trafficking in, perhaps, language. A word. It is, after all, an opera. Finally the spirit But I was also repulsed by her seemingly excessive curse on nine generations of Ulster warriors, by the sounds, lush and full, but sighing, still not speaking. And then we are ravaged: “I drink from your well.” cruelty displayed by an unforgiving king, by the silence of the crowd watching her debasement, and This work is imperiled from the start, as are the characters we follow through it. Rigorously by the haunting indifference of the women to the danger that threatens the unborn life Macha carries established boundaries, once internalized, dissolve. Weakness (and Weakness) breaks the rules of in her womb. For years I would not tell this story, partly because I did not understand it, and partly engagement. Don’t speak of me, asks the spirit-made-flesh, but Crunnchu, mute until this moment, because I did not understand my troubled and uncertain response to it. simply can’t keep his mouth shut. Speak on her behalf, we tacitly ask of the crowd as Macha appears Some stories may not need to be told, not at first. Perhaps they need to live quietly deep in our before the king. Thanks to the silence of the gathered throng, he proceeds to run Macha into the hearts and minds and souls. At some point when the storyteller and storylistener are ready, the stories ground. And certainly, and above all else, give us a redemptive story, one in which we cannot be will emerge. And when they do, some of the mysteries that confounded us will, instead, astound us implicated. But the bed of sound emerges again, diminishes, and we are left in an accusing, accursed with the beauty and meaning they have always embodied but that remained hidden for so long. When silence. This opera tears contracts to pieces. I wanted others to know this story, I would read one of the standard versions of it to them, for I had Yet even in these transgressions the work feels humble, laying claim to methodical, artisanal decided I would never tell it as a storyteller until it became more fully mine. practice rather than some flash of lightning. It feels as though great care was taken with this work.