Women in Music, on International Women’s Day

It's International Women’s Day which these year does matter more than ever, when the forces of small minded represssion are gaining power, all over the world, in many forms.  ears ago a young upstart advised me "Read more Feminist books". Uh? Like billions of others have done for millenia and are still doing today, I've learned the hard way. It isn't just about middle class western values.  Caring about people, as people, enabling them to have decent lives, these are the values that underpin the issues. And that's also why there's a backlash from those so insecure that their fragile egos need to be supported by hurting others. Real men don't need that.  At least half the world's population is female: We should be celebrating women who do what they do and their best, whoever they are.

But this is a music blog so I'll try to stick to music. We can, and should, be listening to women in music all the time.  It's impossible not to listen to musicians who are women : so many excellent soloists and ensemble players! It is an issue that sometimes they aren't paid the same as men, but they exist.   Making it to the top as a conductor or music director is tough, but that's tough anyway, and there's enormous nastiness in the business, not least of which comes from fans who don't actually listen.  It's about the music, not the ego of the listener. And there have been women composers for hundreds of years, not just in western classical music.  We need to know, and to keep learning. No bandwagon gestures, no instant fixes. No-one plays, writes or conducts with their anatomy, and that includes men. Only when gender is no longer an issue will we have reached common sense.

Picking out favourites  is invidious because good musicians are always themselves, and distinctive.  Over the years I've written a lot about a few special people, like Clara Schumann, whose greatest contribution was her pioneering role as a performer, travelling all over Europe, arranging her own gigs, transport, accommodation, publicity etc. at a time when there were few celebrity artists who supported themselves.  She's the equivalent of Chopin or Paganini, re-shaping the reception of classical music in the 19th century.  Yet still some think she needs promoting for the work she wrote to please Robert.  Hail thee, Clara, a working mother who was a breadwinner, who made Robert's career possible.

And Vítezslava Kaprálová, whi died aged only 25 yet left behind a considerable body of work.  From childhood, she came into contact with almost every big name in Czech music circles, so perhaps it was inevitable that she was something of a child prodigy. She started writing her own music from the age of 9 and entered the Brno Conservatory aged 15. She moved between Prague and Paris, developing a strikingly independent and original voice. She began conducting in her teens and worked with masters like Vítězslav Novák and Václav Talich. In her early 20's she was conducting the Czech Philharmonic and made a notable impact on her contemporaries, including schoolmate Rafael Kubelik. In 1938, aged 22, she conducted the BBC  Symphony Orchestra in her own Miliitary Sinfonieta (1937). Against the background of Nazi confrontation, it's quite a statement. Fierce, bright brasses suggest defiance, more lyrical passages suggest the endurance of more peaceful (possibly Czech)  values.. The tension between driving ostinato and themes of soaring freedom give the piece considerable sophistication. Perhaps we can even hear echoes of Janáček's Sinfonietta in the cheeky, rhythmic fanfare towards the end.  It may well be Kaprálová's humorous way of acknowledging quirky nationalist spirit.  Is the Military Sinfonietta "women's work" ? Of course not : it's a daring take on Janáček's Sinfonietta, by a young composer whose father was a Janáček specialist. She knew what she was doing. I've written a lot about her songs and piano works, which are a lot less famous.  (click on link below)

And then there's Rebecca Saunders, one of the best living British composers, which is saying something. Needs no special pleading : she's that good.  Plenty to find more about her on the net, and many opportunities to hear her music. Saunders  once described her method as being like looking at a sculpture from different angles, in different light, against different backgrounds. Yet Traces(2006,commissioned for Staatskapelle Dresden) operates on a much deeper level: hence the double basses, sounds as darkly sonorous as it's possible to get with string instruments,legato that curves and stretches and lifts off suddenly, to slide along from a different angle. It's like touching a work of art, "feeling" it intuitively. As a blind person might see, visualizing by instinct and emotion, surprisingly sensual.  In the second part,it changes tack. Sharper, brighter textures now, very high strings, though the same sense of sweeping curves, sculpting shapes in swathes of sound. It's like glissandi but created by a group of different individuals playing in such connection they move as a unit, stretching the palette beyond what a single instrument could do. Brass and woodwinds form similar blocks, so there's a sense of great forces rotating, revealing different aspects of sound as they move, leaving in their wake ripples of unpitched percussion. Towards the end the keening sounds stretch out, becoming so pure and clean the music seems to float into infinity.

Prom 8 Discoveries - Morfydd Owen and lively Schumann

Morfydd Owen's Nocturne in D flat major (1913), at BBC Prom 8 at the Royal Albert Hall, should transform perceptions about Welsh (and British) music history.  Thomas Søndergård conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, who premiered its first modern premiere last year, though this performance was far more accomplished.  Owen left some 250 surviving scores by the time of her death at the age of 26, of an extensive range including works for large orchestra, chorus, chamber pieces  songs and works for stage.  To this day, Owen's tally of prizes awarded by the Royal Academy of Music remains unrivalled.  Though she was not part of the male English Establishment, Owen needs no special pleading.  Her music stands on its own merits, highly individual and original.  Her work was published in the Welsh Hymnal when she was 16, before she graduated from Cardiff and moved to London, where she moved in Bohemian, arty circles with the likes of D H Lawrence, Ezra Pound and Prince Yusupov, one of the conspirators who assassinated Rasputin.   A "new woman" she was also independent and had a second career as a singer, hence her fluency in writing for voice.  Unlike far too many supposedly "lost" composers, Owen's legacy was substantial. Her reputation doesn't rest on sentimentality or gender alone, but on the hard evidence of her music itself.

The Nocturne is sophisticated and highly original, which compares well with much else written at the time.  A mysterious woodwind melody calls forth, answered by the strings. The line is is illuminated by tiny bright woodwind fragments, before the main theme is developed into poignant song. Again the strings respond, lit by swathes of brighter winds and harps.  Highly atmospheric yet formally structured, this Noctune now eneters a second, more expansive theme which moves with great assurance towards a magnificent crescendo which suddenly shifts to more urbane, lively motifs. If this is a tone poem about night, it's not somnolent but filled with incident and detail.  Yet another theme develops, this time led by violin. gradually tension builds up : strong, assertive chords not quite ostinato lead to yet another theme, like a lyrical dance for solo woodwind, garlanded by strings and harps.  Such deftness of design, such precise orchestration, and such beauty. All packed into barely half an hour, but unhurried and clear of purpose.  

Owen's Nocturne reminded me of Debussy Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and even possibly of Stravinsky, whose work Owen would have known, given her interest in what was happening in Paris and Russia. Yet its serene confidence is highly distinctive : Owen most definitely had a voice of her own, though she was only 22 when it was completed.  BBC NOW should make this Nocturne part of their standard repertoire and explore more of Owen's unique and fascinating music.  Please also read my other two articles on Morfydd Owen  :  Talent has No Gender and Portrait of a Lost Icon.  (which is about the groundbreaking recording of her songs. Both include liniks to Tŷ Cerdd, pioneers of Owen's music and of other Welsh composers.

Unfortunaterly the BBC's obsession with artificial themes yet again obscured the music.  The tag "Youthful Beginnings" is pretty meaningless in itself, hence the need to include pieces by Lili Boulanger and early Mendelssohn and Schumann, which otherwise don't cohere as a programme.  Boulanger and Morfydd Owen were almost exact contemporaries and died young, but that's where the similarities end. Though Boulanger won the composition prize at the Prix de Rome aged 19 - no small achievement - she didn't leave as much as Owen did. Again, perfectly fair enough, everyone develops at different rates.  D'un matin de printemps and D'un soir triste are delightful if somewhat slight, but her reputation was bolstered vigorously by her sister Nadia and her followers.  These pieces are heard fairly frequently (last November with John Storgårds)  because programme planners need to fill agendas about gender.  Owen's music speaks for itself  regardless of reputation.

Bertrand Chamayou was the soloist in Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto no 1 in G minor, which was  balm to listen to. No special pleading needed.  Whatever his sex and age, Mendelssohn had a unique musical personality which makes his music distinctive.  Søndergård concluded Prom 8 with Schumann's Symphony no 4 in D minor, in the version dating from 1841. This was his glorious Liederjahre when a stream of masterpieces burst forth unstemmed. It's not the work of an immature composer, but rather of one who has so much to say that he needs to get it down quickly. This version instead of the better known 1851 revision has merit.  The orchestration is freer and more spontaneous, textures brighter and livelier.  Søndergård understood why it matters that the four movements flow one into the other. They're so full of inventive spirit that it would be wrong to hold them back to make them "neat".  Great energy, even moments of quirky humour.  Low brass and winds blast, almost in parody of stolid ostentation. A vivacious climax, wittily and succintly achieved.  This version of Schumann's symphony is hardly unknown but how refreshing and vital it felt in this performance! 

Queen and composer - Lili'oukalani

Lili'oukalani, (1838-1917) not "forgotten" the last Queen of independent Hawaii, not "forgotten" at all, for she was and remains a symbol of Hawaiian identity, an issue still alive today.  Lili'oukalani was well educated, accomplished and well travelled, who believed in enlightened "Victorian values" of serving her people. "From time immemorial",she wrote "the Hawaiian people have always been lovers of poetry and song"."To compose was as natural for me as to breathe".

Although Hawaii had an elected government and its monarchs were popular, the sugar and pineapple barons from the United States wanted control.  Capitalism prevailed. Hawaii was annexed. Lili'oukalani did not want violence, but was arrested and sentenced to death. She was reprieved but served five years in prison   In prison,she continued to write. "Music", she wrote in her memoirs "remains the source of the greatest consolation".  She never gave in, challenging the annexation through the courts until her death, one hundred years ago.  Though she couldn't defeat colonialism, her defiant spirit lives on in her legacy of music and intelligence.

Lili'oukalani's song Aloha Oe, written in 1873, is so famous that everyone knows it, even if they know nothing else about Hawaii.  With its ukulele accompaniment and swaying rhythms it fits tourist stereotypes though it reflects traditional Hawaiian music.  The song was written in 1878, when her brothers were Kings, and after her marriage.Aloha Oe is so famous that it's ubiquitous, but she wrote a lot more. Her  songs are published and performed in Hawaiian circles.  Yet she shouldn't be seen merely as a niche composer.  Her music shows the influence of 19th century art music,with which she was familiar, for she lived briefly in Europe and clearly had access to scores and the music of her time.  The clip I've added below was made in 1904, so the "western" song aspects are probably affected by the taste of the time,ie."missionary"song.. There is a MUCH better version on YT with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. Lili'oukalani was a fascinating personality,worth reading about. There's also a good documentary, if you search on YT.

Please also see my take on the 1937 movie The Hurricane, which deals with oppression and first nation freedoms. 

Morfydd Owen - Portrait of a Lost Icon

For my review of Morfydd Owen's Nocturne at  BBC Prom 8 please see HERE.   A new recording, made late last year,  Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a Lost Icon, from Tŷ Cerdd, specialists in Welsh music, reveals Owen as one of the more distinctive voices in British music of her era : a grand claim but not without foundation. To this day, Owen's tally of prizes awarded by the Royal Academy of Music remains unrivalled.  Though she was not part of the male English Establishment, Owen needs no special pleading.  Her music stands on its own merits, highly individual and original.  Her work was published in the Welsh Hymnal even before she graduated and moved to London, where she moved in Bohemian, arty circles with the likes of D H Lawrence, Ezra Pound and Prince Yusupov, one of the conspirators who assassinated Rasputin.  What might she have achieved, had she lived longer, or continued to develop in an international milieu ? Tŷ Cerdd have produced an intriguing collection of her piano pieces and songs, performed by Elin Manahan Thomas and Brian Ellsbury.  Definitely a recording worth getting, for Owen's music is exquisite, enhanced by good performances.  Buy it HERE from Tŷ Cerdd, who also supply scores. (it's now also available from amazon and other sources)


In his notes, Brian Ellsbury writes "One of the fascinations of (Owen's) compositions is the plethora of contrast, often simply between major and minor, melancholy and joy.....the juxtaposition of a self conscious  gaucheness and sophistication - the cosy homely feel of Welsh harmony suddenly layered with unexpectedly complex and deft modulations and almost modern jazz-like harmony,"
 
Owen's setting of William Blake's Spring (1913) is joyously energetic. "Little boy, full of joy, little girl, sweet and small"   Manahan Thomas's lithe, bright soprano perfectly captures the spirit of youth. In The Lamb (1914) Evans subtly underpins the deceptive innocence with richer, more contemplative undertones, never overloading the lines with pathos. Sophisticated, yet pristine.  In contrast, Tristesse (1915) with dramatic, exclamatory crescendi, very much in the surreal spirit of Maeterlinck,  though the text is Alfred de Musset. More hyperactive than Debussy, as exotic as Ravel, this is an unusually unsettling song that suggests not romance but fervid imagination.

A selection of pieces for piano, some like the Rhapsody in C sharp major and Maida Vale, discovered in unpublished manuscript. The miniature Little Eric (1915) is barely a minute long yet vividly idiosyncratic while Tal y Llyn (1916) is  confidently lyrical with a jaunty central motif - witty contrasts of tempi. Strong chords alternate with lively figures in Prelude in E minor (1914) , contrasting well with the early (1910) Sonata for Piano in E minor, which is more diffuse.

The Four Flowers Songs - Speedwell, Daisy's Song, To Violets and God Made a Lovely Garden  were written over a period of seven years, Speedwell (1918) being among Owen's last completed works.  A speedwell is a weed, but cheerful and perky, but here it dreams grand dreams. In a way, this song might encapsulate Owen's idiom, lending seeming insouciance with great inner strength.  God made a Lovely Garden (1917) reveals Owen's gift for melody, expressed with sincerity, not sentimentality.

A long, pensive piano introduction opens Gweddi y Pechadur (1913), the only Welsh language song on this disc. Although neither texts nor translations are included with this recording, the clarity of Owen's setting displays the innate beauty of the language, a "singing language" if ever there was one, and a good reason why non-speakers should study the song.  It is a dignified lament, in minor key.  To Our Lady of Sorrows ((1912) is a miniature scena, in which the Mater Dolorosa contemplates the body of Christ.  Like Gweddiy Pechadur, its lines descend to diminuendo, but the last line packs a punch. Suddenly, the Mother isn't a religious icon, but an ordinary, human woman. A sudden leap up the scale, and passionate mellisma on the word "Baby" and an equally sudden hushed, hollow descent on the words "is dead". 

Photographs show that Morfydd Owen was a beauty with dark hair and eyes, to match what might have been an intense, passionate personality. She had love affairs, requited or unrequited, but after a courtship of only six weeks, married Ernest Jones, the psychiatrist, and acolyte of Sigmund Freud.  Perhaps Owen needed a father figure, despite her talent and acclaim: she wasn't independently wealthy.  Jones didn't encourage her career, and she seems to have been unhappy.  In September 1918, the couple went on holiday in Wales, where Owen died suddenly in uncertain circumstances.  This recording concludes with In the Land of Hush-a-bye, with words by Eos Gwalia "The Nightingale of Wales", aka Gaynor Rowlands (1883-1906), a Welsh actress who lived in London, who, like Morfydd Owen, died young from complications after surgery.  The song is simple, yet charming, and includes Owen's characteristic use of sudden leaps within a phrase. At the end, Manahan Thomas holds the last word for several measures until it fades into silence.  

 Please also see my article on  Morfydd Owen's Nocturne Talent  has No Gender

Morfydd Owen - Talent has no gender

Is International Women's Day bad for women?  Is it innate hypocrisy to make a fuss one day a year when all round the world, millions of women are struggling simply to survive and protect others? Making a fuss about middle class white folk priorities distracts from much more immediate issues like poverty, abuse, health, education, even climate change, where activism would really make a change. So some people react in fury because some women composer isn't revered like Schubert?  Tell that to the women of Africa and the Middle East, or in the underclasses in affluent "civilized" societies. Until women are respected for themselves, not for their gender, media frenzy about Women's Day is demeaning.

Good women have been doing good things for millennia, almost always against the odds. Today, let's remember Morfydd Owen (1891-1918).  She doesn't seem to have been shaped by her gender. Though she died before her 27tth birthday, she was prolific. She moved in interesting artistic and intellectual circles and might, quite likely, have developed well.  Read more about her HERE on Tŷ Cerdd, Discover Welsh Music, from which you can buy printed scores and also a CD of her songs for voice and piano.  Making her work available is the proper way  to honour her memory.  Talent needs no special pleading.  

 

Morfydd Owen's Nocturne for orchestra can be heard on BBC Radio 3 here, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Perry So, and not, as far as I can tell, recorded commercially. It's original and quite distinctive, especially considering it was written in 1913 when Owen was a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. A lone clarinet sings a melody, taken up by strings. Almost immediately a flute enters, gradually taking over, introducing a new theme, itself taken up by celli and low strings. The first melody and gradually, a richer, deeper theme emerges.  In this second section, the mood is confident, framing a vivacious cantilena for woodwinds, which dances merrily along, decorated by harps and percussion.  A solo violin extends the melody which is then taken up by the full strings. The tempo stirs, and the music surges towards a striking climax where chords thrash wildly but purposefully, then diminishes to reveal a new theme, quirky, sassy and spirited. A nocturne, yes, but very unusual.

C H Sorley A Swift Radiant Morning - Roderick Williams

Roderick Williams and Susie Allan  gave the world premiere of A Swift Radiant Morning commissioned for theThree Choirs Festival. Listen here, because it's an interesting work that extends the canon of British song. "A swift radiant morning" aptly describes Charles Hamilton Sorley, a young man of outstanding promise, killed by a sniper at Loos, seven months short of his 21st birthday.  At that age, few fulfil their potential, but  C H Sorley must have been quite a personality.  In this photo he stares at the camera without flinching, unfazed by the knowledge that he was going to war.  We can see why Sorley's father said "he looked upon the world with clear eyes , and the surface did not deceive him".
 
Sorley was in Trier when war was declared in 1914. On his return to England, he did his duty and joined the Suffolk Regiment . Yet in his poem To Germany, he writes of war with maturity way beyond his years. The poem is worth reading because it shows his inner strength. He could resist the hate games around him.  This lucid intelligence marks him out as a person with vision. Notice too his direct, yet highly distinctive, way with words. How he would have relished the freedoms of the 1920's and 1930's. Many good poets were destroyed by war - Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg and Ivor Gurney, but John Masefield said that Sorley was the greatest loss.

In A Swift Radiant Morning, Rhian Samuel (b 1944) sets two poems and four texts by Sorley, which has a bearing on her musical conception. Sorley left only 37 complete poems, but a large body of letters. They make fascinating reading, since Sorley was an acute observer and processed ideas with great originality.  Here's a link to the full collection of letters published in 1916. Letters are like a conversation, where one party speaks and the other responds. The voice leads, but the piano comments, unobtrusively. Sorley's texts are so expressive that the piano can't quite compete, but that's no demerit.  Samuel respects Sorley's syntax and turns of phrase, editing the longer texts with sensitivity.    Roderick Williams is an ideal interpreter, since he has the uncanny ability to make what he sings feel personal and direct. A natural match for CH Sorley !  At times, Samuel forces the voice above its natural range. Williams manages extremely well, but I wonder if this cycle could be transposed for tenor.  A Swift Radiant Morning is a well-crafted, sensitive work which deserves attention, and not just because the subject himself was so singular. I've subscribed to a source which features a lot of Rhian Samuel's work. Lots worth listening to.

At Hereford, Roderick Williams and Susie Allan also did Tim Torry's The Face of Grief (2003) to poems by Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) but the setting is minimal and the poems not  in the same league as Sorley's.  Please also read my piece on the rest of Roderick Williams's  recital, which highlighted Elgar's Sea Pictures, in the piano version, transposed for baritone. 

Erotic Ralph Vaughan Williams - Fair Child of Beauty

Ralph Vaughan Williams : Fair Child of Beauty, the latest release from Albion Records, the recording label of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.  All Albion's recordings present RVW rarities, but this disc has a much wider potential market. It's important because it demonstrates the creative relationship between the composer and Ursula Wood, who would later become his wife. Many remember Ursula as the elderly lady who presided over RVW Society events and was the force behind the Little Missenden Festival, but Ursula's own role as an artist is overshadowed.

While still a student, Ursula  had heard RVW's Job, a Masque for Dancing.  Perhaps she remembered this when she approached RVW with a scenario for a masque based on Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, a text she'd loved since her schooldays, Spenser had written the piece for his own wedding in 1594, so despite its invocations of Gods and images from classical antiquity, it's enlivened by heartfelt immediacy.  The bridegroom anticipates the arrival of the bride. The rituals of the ceremony progress until the couple are left "concealed through covert night" in wedded bliss. The scenario proved prophetic. RVW invited Ursula to lunch to discuss the project. As they left, Ursula later said "as we were waiting for the light to cross, he put his arm around me and gave me a passionate kiss...by the time I went to see him off, I had fallen in love",

And thus was born A Bridal Day: A Masque by Ursula Wood, to use its official title   This was music to be danced to, and mimed, in the formal but understated Tudor style, hence the simplicity of the orchestration - solo flute, piano, five strings and a small vocal ensemble. The direct, personal nature of the poem is further emphasized  by the use of a baritone, declaiming the spoken narration and singing where necessary. The bride remains veiled behind the music, which throughout bears RVW's individual stamp.

Ursula was to have mimed the part but the first full performance did not take place due to the war. Perhaps, a piece that celebrates Juno the guardian of marital fidelity and Hymen, the spirit of virginity, might have been sensitive in an era when moral judgement went against extra-marital relationships.  The refrain "all  the woods will answer and their echoes bring" would be a bit racy when the lady in question was a Mrs Wood.  It is a delightful piece, a very Turangalîla-Symphonie, glorifying explicit erotic passion.  Many, many years ago, reading about Ursula VW and Elizabeth Maconchy, I  observed how modern those women were in their honest enthusiam for healthy pleasure, and nearly got lynched for lèse-majesté  To Ursula's credit, she was never a hypocrite.

The premiere did not take place until 1953, but the black and white television transmission didn't please the Vaughan Williamses. Perhaps now is the time when some enterprising ensemble can bring The Bridal Day to fruition? But nothing twee, please. The beauty of this recording lies in the excellence of performance. The Britten Sinfomia Septet conducted by Alan Tongue play with committment and dignity.  Philip Smith sings the baritone part, John Hopkins declaims the narration and the Joyful Company of Singers, directed by Peter  Broadbent, do the choruses, as cheerfully and naturally as if they were singing at a real wedding.

Disappointed by the reception of The Bridal Day, RVW created Epithalamion, a Cantata (1957), reworking The Bridal Day for more conventional chorus and orchestra, leaving out the solo voice, narration and dances.. This later work is reasonably well known, since its sequences suggest snatches of RVW's other music. It's also less emotionally up front, almost neutered, which might perhaps cater to some audiences,  but hasn't the quirky personality of The Bridal Day.

Another Unknown Soldier - Lilian Elkington

For my review of the Andrew Davis BBC SO concert featuring Elgar, Lilian Elkington and Raymond Yiu, please see HERE. On International Women's Day, I'd like to remember another Unknown Soldier, Lillian Elkington (1901-69), of whose music so little is known that even her own daughter didn't know she was a composer until an interviewer contacted her.  Perhaps more can be traced through Census information. I'll leave that to intrepid archivists. There's bound to be something.

What little we do know about her comes from Lewis Foreman, who wrote the notes for the first recording of Elkington's Out of the Mist (1921), the score of which was discovered in a second-hand shop in Worthing, presumably inadvertently dispersed with her effects after her death. Elkington studied with Granville Bantock in Birmingham, and some of her works were heard in recital at the time. On her marriage (unknown date and place) she gave up her career altogether: unfortunately not such an unusual situation in those days.  Alma Mahler apologists should take note. All the more respect to the many women who did continue their careers, and to those who couldn't and are forgotten.

The title Out of the Mist refers to the heavy mist that hung over the Channel when the ship carrying the body of the Unknown Soldier arrived back in England.  I have no idea whether Elkington saw the event, or whether she read about it in the papers or saw newsreels. Her response, in this music, was dignified and elegaic.  The piece runs just under 8 minutes, but is ambitiously scored for large ensemble . It begins mysteriously : one can imagine the ship materializing in port, out of the mists, docking and unloading the coffin,which was then ceremoniously taken, by carriage, to rest in Westminster Abbey, as seen in the photo above. The Unknown Soldier is "home" at last, carrying with him , symbolically, the memory of millions of other who would never return.  Thus,Out of the Mist ends with transcendent brightness, as if the Unknown Soldier and the men and women he stands for are bathed in glory.

Although we only know Elkington through this one piece, it, too, stands symbolically, for the work she might have done had she lived in a different era, and for the works other women may have written which have been forgotten,  and for those who,like the soldiers of 1914-1918, were never able to fulfil their potential.  Fortunately for us, Out of the Mist is preserved on the seminally important recording on Dutton, where top billing goes to a superb Elgar Spirit of England.. in the first recording of the version for twovoices. This CD also includes the first recording of Philip Lancaster's performing edition of Ivor Gurney's War Elegy (1921) and also F S Kelly's Elegy for Strings  In Memoriam Rupert Brooke and Charles Hubert Parry's The Chivalry of the Sea.  I've written about Elgar's Spirit of England HERE and HERE and about Gurney's War Elegy HERE. 

The information above comes from Lewis Foreman's notes to the 2006 Dutton recording.  As I thought, there's more recent research, from Pam Blevins'  Maud Powell website on women in music :

"There is an excellent article in the Maud Powell Signature mag on Lilian Elkington by David Brown (the guy who found her stuff in the Worthing bookshop). This fills in a lot of the gaps you refer to and means they are not gaps. Seems she definitely did compose at least a bit after her marriage. And we only have the word of her daughter that she stopped (the daughter who didn't even realise she had composed at all so how would she know? Other works might have gone missing)."

http://www.maudpowell.org/signature/Portals/0/pdfs/signature/Signature_Autumn_2008.pdf

The article is at page 45 of this PDF:

From a reader of mine 
 "Daughter also says, though, that Lilian born in 1900 not the widely said 1901. Daughter says Sep 15 1900. I can confirm from BMD records that birth was registered in the Oct-Nov-Dec quarter of 1900 (in Birmingham).I have also found her in 1911 census aged 10 (which would be right cos her 11th birthday is after the April census day) Her father was a "coffin furniture manufacturer". Interesting! "

More sense from Beyoncé than Marin Alsop

Beyoncé speaks more sense than Marin Alsop! "Gender Equality is a myth!" writes Beyoncé, in an article in The Shriver Report, a media initiative led by Maria Shriver (JFK's neice) that seeks to modernize America’s relationship to women. "It isn’t a reality yet", says Beyoncé .... Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect. Humanity requires both men and women, and we are equally important and need one another. So why are we viewed as less than equal? These old attitudes are drilled into us from the very beginning. We have to teach our boys the rules of equality and respect, so that as they grow up, gender equality becomes a natural way of life. And we have to teach our girls that they can reach as high as humanly possible." (read the full report here)

When  Marin Alsop became the first woman  to conduct the BBC Last Night of the Proms, she said " I have to say I’m still quite shocked that it can be 2013 and there can still be firsts for women.” Millions of women the world over would not have been shocked in the least. They have to live with the day-to-day reality that glitzy events like the Last Night of the Proms mean very little if you earn a quarter of what men earn, if you get hired or get an education in the first place.

The media went wild in a frenzy of self-satisfaction because it was easy copy, and popular. Some reports were so fawning that they confirmed the idea that women get praise simply for being women.  Gender equality won't come about until people genuinely don't care who is conducting, but how they conduct. And like it or not, classical music is middle-class art for middle-class people. Perhaps some of the world's poor and oppressed were watching but the victory would have seemed hollow in the light of real life experience. Even women who have worldly success, eg in the banking sector, know only too well how entrenched misogynistic attitudes are. So all the more respect to Beyoncé, who struggled hard to get where she is. She's rich, talented and famous but she still hasn't forgotten what life is like for millions of ordinary women.
 
photo Sergio Savarese, Sao Paolo

Clara Schumann's 200th Birthday

Today is Clara Schumann's 200th birthday. She may not be getting the publicity birthday boys like Wagner and Verdi are getting, or even the coverage given to mere striplings like Benjamin Britten (aged 99 and 10/12ths). But with all the fuss about the "first woman conductor at the BBC Proms", it is Clara whom we should honour.

Clara is a genuine icon in many ways. We will never know what she sounded like as pianist but she was one of the first mega-celebrity pianists, who filled houses all over Europe. Audiences who had heard Chopin and Lizst live loved her playing, which suggests that she was good, whatever her gender. And Brahms, who played well and had a good ear, loved her dearly. We may never know what she sounded like but if she'd had the support of recording companies, etc. she might be better known than she is. (In those days performers had to manage themselves without any system to back them up.)

 She grew up in a strange, strained atmosphere. Her father denied her any contact with her mother or indeed with anyone he could not control. To marry Robert Schumann, she had to take her father to court in a case which shocked those who knew of it. That alone would make her someone to admire. Breaking out of an abusive situation is tough if that's all you've ever known, even now, but she had to face a patriarchal society much more rigid than we know And, she was nice to her Dad when he was old.

Clara lived to perform. She loved Robert dearly, but would rush back on tour as soon as her pregnancies ended. She wasn't the first female celebrity pianist even if we exclude Fanny Mendelssohn whose position placed her "above" society. But she was an artist with an independent career. People listened because she was good, not because she was a novelty. Robert wanted her to write music. She obliged him, but her real passion was playing. Every few years, there are attempts to promote her piano songs. Her greatest champion is Wolfgang Holzmair, whose 2002 recording of Clara's songs with Imogen Cooper is the best in the field. No comparison, although the songs are heard quite often. Holzmair's soft-grained voice suits them well, and he sings with sincerity, so the songs work, just about. The problem is that her heart wasn't in writing, but in performance. So when we honour Clara Schumann, we should honour her as a true pioneer, who achieved what she did without tokenism and media hype. Strange how those who make a fuss about "the first woman conductor" don't seem to have noticed Clara Schumann.So much for true feminism, which still has a long way to go.

The Fricka of Country Music - It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels

Kitty Wells is dead, aged 92. "Feminist Country Godmother to Britney Spears" runs an artiile in the Atlantic but that doesn't tell half the story, and the Britney Spears bit is demeaning.  Another article here in the Telegraph. 

More than ten years before Betty Friedan and women's Lib, Kitty Wells was a pioneer when there weren't many roles for women in Country music, or indeed the whole social milieu of Country music, dominated as it was by Bible Belt patriarchy, which even men didn't know how to question. Alcoholism was the angst of the misfit in the Country scene. Kitty wasn't the first female Country or Cajun singer, but she was different from nice girls like the Carter family who knew their place. Kitty was happily married for 74 years, almost certainly not leftist. You bet she never burned her bra or flag. But she stood up to things. "Will your lawyer talk to God and plead your case on high?" "Making believe, you're somebody's love, never mine".. "Have I lost you to a woman half my age?" Without Kitty Wells, perhaps no Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette or Dolly Parton. And thousands of nice girls in white cardigans and aprons started to think, why should we take things lying down?  Real change happens when the non-urban, non-intellectual proletariat are roused. Kitty Wells, with her Southern belle gentility, deserves a place in the Valhalla of modern womanhood.

 Kitty became famous almost by accident, after recording a riposte to Hank Thompson's The Wild Side of Life which blamed womern and alcohol for leading him astray. No, sang Kitty, using the same tune. "It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk Angels,.... Many a time married men think they're still single, that has caused many a good girl to go wrong. It's a shame that all the blame is on us woman, ....from the start most every heart that's ever broken was because there always was a man to blame".  It's overstatement of course, but understandable given the heirachical situation at the time. Women (and men) aren't born bad, they're made bad. So even if Kitty Wells, the Fricka of Country Music,  upholds marriage and good behaviour, she's not judging those who fall. 

Ultimately, feminism liberates men as well as women because it shows that there are other ways to be. Again and again, in Country music people are destroyed by this either/or dilemma between perfection and dissolution. Britney Spears went off the rails because she couldn't cope. Many times I hoped she'd learn not to blame herself but the crazy world around her. Singing, she doesn't need to learn from Kitty Wells, but how to stand up for herself.

Lots on this site about Country and Cajun music, feminsism, fesity women and Lieder. Please read here how the Lieder and Country Music traditions ironically connect.

Anna Netrebko lets rip for the women of the world !

Normally I run miles from stuff like Women in the World, so pious and earnest! Real women are busy getting on with things. But this year Anna Netrebko got invited to do the "women in the arts" slot and she wowed them dead. Remember this was for people who don't listen to classical music usually, so the idea is to blast them off their feet. Which Trebs knows how to do. She's pretty down to earth, I think, and has often been spotted incognito at the Royal Opera House. Last time, she was there, for Don Giovanni, to watch Erwin Schrott undress (which she can do at home), she was sitting two seats from me. Nobody noticed, since many of the audience were first timers, which must have miffed her. At first I looked at her friend, who had a  family resemblance, and was stunningly attired. They rushed off after the first act but returned early for the second. I was meditating, as I do in spare moments, and felt a presence beside me. Looking up, straight at La Trebs, not two feet away. Beatific smile from her, genuinely friendly, though she didn't have a clue who I was. I smiled back, she smiled again. Lovely! So watch her as she shows a non-music audience what her job involves.

Bluebell Klean, Josephine Lang and Ida von Hahn-Hahn

Bluebell Klean, Ella Mary Leather, Olga Samaroff, Josephine Lang, Ida von Hahn-Hahn.... what names! Who could they have been?  Names like that conjure up colourful connotations. The latest edition of Signature, the Maud Powell Society's magazine, is now out. Download it HERE (and also back issues). Do explore, because it's about singular, often courageous people who had interesting lives even if they aren't household names. We don't even begin to appreciate what women have achieved because we're brainwashed by clichéd assumptions about what women could or couldn't do in the past.  Because society teaches us to evaluate things in male terms, we evaluate male composers primarily by their formal achievements. Thus we underestimate the extent to which female composers were productive in several different aspects of life at the same time.

Josephine Lang is a perfect example of a woman whose creativity was expressed in different directions. She raised a large family in difficult circumstances while continuing to write good music. Having a family is a vocation even if it's not regarded in modern terms as a "career". For Lang, family wasn't an optional either/or, it was part of who she was. The definitive biography by Harald and Sharon Krebs,  comes with a full CD of her music. Malcolm Martineau included Lang's songs in his current series on German song at the Wigmore Hall. In this current edition of Signature, Sharon Krebs writes about Lang's relationships with the poets whose music she set. Some of them were personal friends, women like Ida von Hahn-Hahn, who led similarly muti-tasking lives as she did. She networked. She wasn't "suppressed".  One of the interesting things about Lang is her relationship with Felix Mendelssohn, who mentored her. This supplements R Larry Todd's authoritative study of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. I admire Josephine Lang (and Fanny Hensel) because their creativity was channeled through more than one course. Read the article on Lang and her poets in Signature, it's fascinating. (scroll to page 18 onn the download).

Similarly, Bluebell Klean, who adopted her unusual first name herself. She was a composer and pianist who gave a concert of her own music at the Bechstein Room in 1906, now renamed the Wigmore Hall. Programmes remain of other concerts of her work until 1914, after which she seems to disappear from the archives. But she didn't retreat from life. There's a wonderful photo from a 1924 newspaper where she's grinning next to a huge fish. Champion angler, winning a competition out of a field of 300!

Also in this current issue is an article on Olga Samaroff,  aka Mrs Leopold Stokowski, but a most distinctive personality in her own right. Her "Russian" name was an invention, adopted to sound exotic and more marketable. She came from Texas and was a charismatic teacher.  Also articles on Myra Hess in the US, Meira Warschauer and  Elinor Remick Warren, who looks the spitting image of the actress Lee Remick. Are they related ? If so, creative women in several generations.

Ella Mary Leather? She appears in a back issue of Signature but what a name!  She was a county matron from the shires who spent her life doing good deeds for others, a pillar of her community which is no bad thing at all. Yet she also researched folk customs and music in her local area. Raplh Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth awere indebted to her. Cecil Sharp eventually monopolized the folk song and dance scene, so the women who were so active in the field were eventually written out of the record. But they were there ! And it's thanks to magazines like Signature that they won't be forgotten.

L Onerva - feisty woman and poet

L Onerva was an amazing person, the sort of woman about whom books are written because she's so unusual. All in Finnish, though, but perhaps it's time for a change as Onerva is the kind of genuine feminist icon we need to know about.

Born Hilja Lehtinnen in Helsinki in 1882, she was effectively an orphan by age 7, when her mother was locked up in an asylum for the insane, where she lived on for 40 years. With this in her background, Hilja wasn't hindered. She went off to university, graduating in 1902.   She was married for a while to a man who had a home in Karelia, the Finnish heartland. Onerva's problem wasn't how to express her creativity, but which of her many talents to pursue. She was a gifted writer, drawn to poetry, journalism, novels and theatre, a genre pioneered by other women playwrights like Minna Kanth (1844-1897)

Onerva's first collection of poems was published in 1904. Fiery, exotic poems, which shocked many, coming from a young and respectable woman  "But once within a lifetime opens a fiery rose, that for but one night blossoms and in the morning goes... "It has a leaf all bloody; it has a purple lip, it has a dizzy fragrance like spring winds on the steppe."  Life followed art. Onerva went off to live in Rome with the poet Eino Leino, though both were married to others., When Leino didn't treat Onerva right, she dumped him and returned to Helsinki alone. She pursued an independent career as a novelist and wrote for Helsinki newspapers. Apparently she specialized in "New Women",  creative and lively individualists like herself.

She had a friendship with Toivo Kuula, who set her poems, but was killed in a shocking accident during the Finnish war of Independence in 1918. She married Leevi Madetoja (1887-1942) but it didn't work out. He had her confined in an asylum - like her mother - but luckily (for her) he died five years later and she was released. She lived to be 90, writing prolifically to the end. Not an easy life, no money or leisure, but being a true artist, Onerva was driven to defy the odds against her.
Many of Onerva's poems have been turned into song, but perhaps the finest is a song cycle by Madetoja, Syksy-saja, or Autumn Song.  It's an excellent cycle and really should be better known. There are at least four recordings.  Recommended are Karita Mattila and Helena Juntinnen. If I have time, I'll write more about it, but give it a listen.

Why music education ? Inspiring women teachers

Governments slash arts funding, and get away with it because people don't value culture. Yet arts education opens far more doors than people realize. Although it's not narrowly vocational, it opens doors to history, literature, philosophy and the appreciation of human values. Sometimes, anyway. It teaches sensitivity and the ability to intuit feelings from abstractions. Minims and crotchets speak! These habits are useful in most kinds of business, so they have commercial application in many fields.

There's a lot more to music teaching than technical exercise. Good teachers bring out the best in those they teach, inspiring them to learn and create. The latest issue of Signature magazine is now out. (click link) It's devoted to different ways of music education : Clara Schumann, Nadia Boulanger, Elizabeth Maconchy and many others less famous, like Guirne Crieth, and Denise Restout, companion of Wanda Landowska.

Diana Ambache contributes a thoughtful chapter on Nadia Boulanger and her impact on 20th century music. The article on Clara Schumann is by Annemarie Vogt, extensively researched and detailed. These two pieces alone are reference resources. I was also moved by Pam Blevin's tribute to her own, charismatic teacher : a humble person whose impact on others was great.

Signature is rewarding as it approaches music from a different perspective. Women have always played a part in music but they tend to get written out of history because they aren't appreciated. Yet their contributions are significant and unique. Download the current volume (80 pp). It's a good read.

Mr Beethoven lives upstairs

"There's a madman upstairs!" says a young lad writing to his uncle about a nutcase neighbour who makes a lot of noise."Send Mr Beethoven away, I beg you !" cries the boy. It's a little Freudian considering that Beethoven's own nephew felt exactly the same way.

Long before the advent of DVD, or even CDs, there was a series of cassettes and LP's for kids by Ann Rachlin, called "Fun with Music". Highly recommended as the series was not in the least dumbed down. Each piece is well written, and has something intelligent to say, even if you aren't six anymore. Better than many programme notes these days ! Or the awful Naxos "composer books" series. Rachlin did a "Happy Birthday Mr Beethoven" which was pretty much on the same lines as the DVD - Beethoven seen thru a kid's perspective. "Did you know that Beethoven's favourite food was macaroni cheese? Or that he took a shower standing in a bowl, throwing water all over himself - and the floor?" It's documented too, though you might not read that in Grove. Rachlin's series are still available, so check out the website if you know any kids. Bookmark it for birthdays and Xmas !

My favourite in the series was the one about Mozart's childhood, Mozart the Miracle Maestro, very well researched, but presented in such a way that kids become fascinated with the 18th century. "A small boy who hated sloppy kisses!...A miracle in a cathedral in Rome!...The mystery of the Dark Stranger...Wolfgang's journey through Europe with his sister". In fact, and this is a TRUE STORY, one five year old, visiting Mozart's birthplace in Salzburg, piped up, "that's Mozart's sister!" looking at her portrait. She'd recognized the picture from a children's book and knew the story from Ann Rachlin.

And there are excellent ones on Handel and Haydn, indeed, two on Handel, which should be required listening for people who don't get the baroque. Rachlin's Handel's Firework Party resonates with kids who know London. It is a godsend if you get stuck with kids in the car in Central London traffic. "Fireworks that backfire...Traffic jams in 1749...Sword fights on London Bridge...Road rage in horse-drawn carriages." One minute the kid is having a tantrum, the next it's transfixed by proper music, not pap. The performances are pretty good, LSO, Mackerras etc. Again, Naxos pabulum it ain't.

Google Ann Rachlin for details. The series also includes ballets and orchestras and "stories" like Lt. Kije. Extremely good introduction to music even if you're not a kid.

The Peach Girl

Ruan Lingyu is one of the most iconic symbols of Chinese film. Her tragedy has universal relevance. A few years back a biopic was made of her, but reality was even more interesting.

To understand Ruan, understand the society she came from. Her parents were Cantonese who'd moved to Shanghai, a cosmopolitan boomtown that had suddenly sprung up in the late 19th century. By the time Ruan was born in 1905, Shanghai was one of the biggest, most sophisticated cities in the world, rivalling New York.

But Ruan's father died young and her destitute mother had to turn to the Cantonese community in Shanghai for help. She became a household servant for a wealthy family called Zhang, whose sons were flash young playboys. Needless to say a pretty innocent like Ruan caught their eyes. So she was "married" at 15. The Zhangs owned movie studios. The movie business in China was every bit as active as Hollywood, even then, and Ruan soon became a star. She left the Zhangs and moved to other studios and other "husbands". But no matter how successful an actress might be she was still low status, cruelly treated. Eventually Ruan got caught up in a court case and the tabloids blackened her name so badly that she was driven to suicide, at the age of only 24.

Like Rudolf Valentino, her funeral drew the biggest crowds Shanghai had ever seen, complete with copycat suicides. (also like Valentino). Even Lu Xun, the great writer and intellectual, commented on her case, denouncing the power of the media. For some reason, Chinese movie actresses seemed drawn to early suicide - Grace Chang, Lin Dai and others, as if it were a career path. It would be fascinating to understand why, for it says something about the position of women as artists in early/mid 20th century China.

Movies in that period were important because they often dealt with social issues and the impact of modern life, even if they used sentimental storylines. More so perhaps than Hollywood ? That would be interesting to explore. All I can think of offhand is Chaplin's The Immigrant. Ruan's most famous role was in the film Goddess (1934) where she plays an innocent girl who gets seduced and abandoned, forced into prostitution. She sacrifices nobly to bring up her young son, so he will be a success even if she suffers for it. But of course it all ends badly. Here is a clip from an earlier film, The Peach Girl (1931) which is so moving. She's at the spinning wheel when a city lad spots her. " A city girl's beauty depends on powder and rouge. But this is true beauty !" It's a silent film to which someone has added a piano piece, Chinese but written in westerns style. It's beautiful too and frustratingly familiar - anyone know who wrote it? See the comment below - the composer is David Sosin. Great stuff, sounds just like the real thing - a compliment.

Pelléas et Mélisande Independent Opera Sadler's Wells

Everything Independent Opera does is distinctive. It's a tiny company, but visionary. Pelléas et Mélisande is a challenge even for big houses, but this isn't the kind of company that's daunted. This Pelléas et Mélisande would do credit to much bigger houses. What Independent Opera lacks in money it makes up with imagination and creativity. Talent like this is far rarer than we appreciate. If the big companies take note of Independent Opera, all of us could be in for some of the most vibrant opera in Europe.

There’s hardly any stage space in the Lilian Baylis Theatre at Sadler’s Wells, and the audience seats are so steeply raked that it’s claustrophobic. But claustrophobia is central to the plot. This set, by Madeleine Boyd, uses horizontal plinths which bear down oppressively. Wings, rafters and mechanics are fully visible, a striking illustration of life in this castle, which is repressively formal, organized like an industrial machine. Allemonde is not a happy kingdom. This set reminds us that dungeons and subterranean passages lurk below, Maeterlinck’s metaphor for the subconscious. We catch brief glimpses of the servants who make the edifice function.

This too, is an integral part of the plot even though the roles are silent, for Allemonde is kept alive by scores and scores of underlings who serve in suppressed anonymity. Remember this, for it’s important and pertains to the “surprise” ending this production reveals ! Arkel and Geneviève can’t even walk freely at first but are propelled by machines. When Mélisande enters his life, Arkel can suddenly walk again, albeit with sticks. Geneviève’s costume (also by Boyd) is a statement in itself, a bizarre contraption that makes her look like a piece of ornate Victorian furniture. Her skirt is like a cabinet, brightly polished but strictly compartmentalized. It’s a symbol of the alienated rigidity which Mélisande’s presence shakes to the core.

Independent Opera productions sell out fast, but the company can’t afford really big name singers. Instead, it seeks out the best new talent. Several careers have flourished as a result. The singers here certainly aren’t unknowns, but chosen with care. Andrew Foster-Williams has appeared internationally, at ROH, ENO, WNO and Opera North. He’s vocally very assured but even more interestingly, he gets unexpected depths from Golaud. This production is unusual because it explores the relationships between the men.

Golaud’s emotionally retarded, with a history of clumsy relationships. Foster-Williams makes Golaud’s sexual interest in Mélisande very clear. This adds to the suppressed aggression beneath the surface calm. When they'd met, Mélisande had cried "Ne me touchez pas !", but all Golaud can do is touch her. This Golaud is a man who expresses himself violently because he can’t deal with complex emotions. One of the most striking images in this production is when Golaud strokes Pelléas tenderly and combs his hair. It’s a charged moment. It's not erotic so much as Golaud trying to understand "normal" feelings in his inept way, feelings he knows come naturally to his brother. This is a fascinating characterization, supported by the tenderness that wells up in the music, which speaks for him what he cannot express in words.

This Mélisande, too, isn’t a pallid victim, but, portrayed by Ingrid Perruche, a sexually vibrant woman. Maggie Teyte, one of the great Mélisandes, said that in her time “the characters were so STRONG (her emphasis)……modern performers (in 1958) have taken out all the blood”. She may be mysterious, but she’s a creature of instinct and feeling, who dares push the boundaries. That’s why she leans, dangerously, over the well (significantly called the Fountain of the Blind) and loses her ring. No wonder Pelléas is both terrified and attracted. Vocally, she has enough richness to bring out the sensuality in the part, and visually, she’s voluptuous. The "Rapunzel" scene with Mélisande’s hair, symbol of erotic power, is almost impossible to stage literally, so it’s hinted at in this production obliquely. Perruche’s hair is long enough, wildly curly and free. In the tower scene, Pelléas follows a golden thread. It’s simple but conveys the musical imagery well. It’s strong, yet fragile, and could snap at any time. Later, on her death bed, Mélisande is covered by a silken blanket in exactly the same shade as her hair. It’s a beautiful detail, implying much about the mystery that surrounds her persona.

Thorbjørn Gulbransøy as Pelléas is convincing as a lover because he can convey Pelléas as a full personality, who can stand up to a strong Golaud. His is a beautiful voice. He’s young, he has good experience and potential. Frédéric Bourreau’s Arkel was extremely well developed too. Although he’s old, he’s mentally sharp, and understands subtleties Golaud can never grasp. He’s seated in a wheelchair, but the voice that arises is steady, firm and clear, drawing attention even when he’s silent – a counterpart of sorts to Mélisande herself. Indeed, Arkel comes into his own in the deathbed scene, where Golaud crumbles. Bourreau gives us a glimpse of what Arkel might have been in his prime, expanding the character by the depth of his portrayal.

And the “surprise” final scene ? As Mélisande breathes her last, four of the women who have been working in the shadows all along appear. “Who has summoned them?” cries Golaud fearfully, but no-one knows. No longer are they mere servants, barely seen. Now they stand around Mélisande like dignified Angels of Death, profoundly powerful and moving. Golaud is an emotional illiterate because he’s like Allemonde as it was, a clockwork mechanism operating on auto pilot. Does it mean change ? These women represent another way of being, more attuned to Mélisande, and they defy the King. Does it mean change ? We know that outside the castle the populace is starving, ready for revolt.

Even the sickly baby materialises as a little girl. Mélisande says “elle va pleurer aussi”, but that could mean many different things. Perhaps the girl will grow up and repeat the mysterious cycle ? Small as this detail may be, it’s an important because it reminds us that we still have no idea where Mélisande came from or who she really was.

Further evidence of Independent Opera’s flair for innovation is the orchestration. This was a specially commissioned instrument version of Debussy’s score, made by the composer Stephen McNeff. Since Debussy’s music is exquisitely detailed, it was a daunting proposition. McNeff was struck by the way Debussy ”creates a constantly moving soundworld by layering and doubling, adding and taking away”, not so different in spirit from chamber music. McNeff reduced the numbers to 35 from 50, keeping the central solo parts intact, so what we hear captures the essential quality of the original. It also means that this opera can, in future, be performed in smaller theatres. Yet again, Independent Opera thinks outside the box. That’s why it’s worth paying so much attention to.

http://www.independentopera.com/index.html

Poèmes pour Mi - Gweneth Ann Jeffers Oxford

Who was "Mi" as in Poèmes pour Mi ? She was Claire Delbos, a talented violinist active in new music circles in Paris in the 1920's and 30's. Messiaen adored her. They were married in 1932. For her he wrote violin pieces and the immortal song cycle which bears her pet name. On Friday I heard Gweneth Ann Jeffers and Simon Lepper perform it in the ante-chapel at New College, Oxford. It's a beautiful cycle, though not as wild as Harawi. As Messiaen said, if you want to understand his work, study this cycle as it has all the elements of his later work in embryo.

Poèmes pour Mi starts with delicate moonlight tracery in the piano part which introduces L’Action de graces. The first words “Le ciel” suggest the vast panorama of feelings that will follow. The text repeats phrases starting with “Et…” like a chant in church. Then suddenly the song explodes in delirious joy “Et la Verité, et L’Esprit et la Grace avec son heritage de lumiere”. Then Messiaen challenges the singer with repeated Alléluias, with melismas within the word, stretching the syllables. The fourth song, Épouvante, introduces something strange and surreal, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise to those who know their Messiaen. Jeffers sings the tricky sequence of “ha ha ha ha ha” with the savage grace that is echt Messiaen, then suddenly switching a low “ho”. Vowels mean a lot for they curve round the barbaric imagery in this song which refers to things like “une vomissure triangulaire” (a triangular lump of vomit”. It’s almost like scat singing, or something from a primitive (to western ears) culture.

Then, typically Messiaen switches again to the serenely mystical L’Épouse, where Jeffers keeps her voice hovering, barely above the level of a whisper. Lepper’s piano entwines the vocal line, for this is a song about marital union. The balance is carefully judged. More contrasts with the songs Les Deux Guerriers, and Le Collier. The first is like a march, the lovers being “warriors”, in the sense that angels are sometimes depicted as warriors armed in a cosmic struggle between good and evil. Then suddenly domesticity returns, transfigured with tenderness. Jane Manning, Britain’s great Messiaen champion, wrote of this song, “One can’t help thinking of the mystical properties of crystals and prisms” for the sounds seem to refract in intricate patterns of light. The final song, Prière Exaucée, is demanding, combining guttural sounds like Frappe, tappe, choque with expansive cries, Donnez-moi votre Grace, marital love uniting with the love of God.

Excellent performance as you'd expect from Gweneth Ann Jeffers. easily the best Messiaen singer of her generation. Sadly, Claire Delbos developed some kind of mental illness after the birth of her son and ended up in a psych hospital, where she lived on for 30 years.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2008/Jul-Dec08/olf21710.htm

Feisty women musicians, composers

The autumn issue of The Maud Powell Signature, Women in Music is now available on line free at http://www.maudpowell.org/signature/

This issue features women who have been “Lost and Found” or who simply are not as well-known as they should be. David J. Brown recounts his experience of finding the music of English composer Lilian Elkington in a used bookshop in Worthing, England, shares what he was able to learn about her life and tells how his efforts led to a recording of her only surviving orchestral work. Ian Graham-Jones provides a rich portrait of composer Alice Mary Smith whose successful career was cut short by her early death and takes us on his journey of discovery that led him to a leaking garden shed.

In Europe, Annemarie Vogt introduces readers to Berta Geissmar, friend of Furtwangler and Beecham and administrator of that male bastion, the Berlin Philharmonic, while Susan Pickett, writing from Washington State, chronicles the career of Swedish composer and organist Elfrida Andree, a bold woman who dared to defy convention.

On the North American side of the Atlantic, Elizabeth Juliana Knighton recounts the pioneering career of American conductor Mary Davenport Engberg while Anya Lawrence introduces readers to the Canadian-born composer Gena Branscombe. The Children’s Corner features American violinist Rachel Barton Pine whose work in music includes bringing obscure composers back into public awareness and a strong commitment to education. Welsh composer Grace Williams, English conductor Gwynne Kimpton, pianist-composer Teresa Carreno and violinist Maud Powell also play roles in this issue. Columnist Diana Ambache reflects on attitudes towards women composers and her own response to their music while Pamela Blevins tours her own bookshelves for books about women in music.