Poems of Love and the Rain. A Song Cycle for Mezzo Soprano and Piano

Notes ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 1321
Author(s):  
Eleanor Kulleseid ◽  
Ned Rorem
Keyword(s):  
Song Cycle ◽  
Mezzo Soprano

Reflection, Representation, Religion: André Caplet’s Le Miroir de Jésus

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Megan Sarno
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Creative Process ◽  
Song Cycle ◽  
New Music ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Mezzo Soprano ◽  
Women's Choir ◽  
French Nation

André Caplet’s Le Miroir de Jésus (1923), a song cycle scored for mezzo soprano soloist, women’s choir, string quartet, and two harps, has a lush sound world and dramatic vocal declamation, and it was immediately recognized as a masterpiece by the Parisian musical press. The work’s religious topic—mysteries of the rosary—has long been taken as the unambiguous sign that the piece and its composer were unapologetically Catholic, like the author of the poems, the convert Henri Ghéon. In the context of a secular French nation, unambiguous Catholicism can easily signal reactionary politics. Moreover, since it does not project images of anarchy, flappers, or committed nonchalance toward morality, when interpreted vis-à-vis the narrative of French musical aesthetics in the 1920s, the work’s status changed from masterpiece to footnote. Yet, though the work’s early reception by Catholic writers cemented its classification as a sacred work, Caplet’s own goals were less clear. Through a comparative musical analysis of characteristics that Le Miroir shares with Caplet’s secular works whose themes come from classicism or mystery, I demonstrate his agnostic aesthetic. Through an investigation of archival sources relating to Caplet’s smaller contemporaneous projects, including a 1923 setting of a poem by Baudelaire, his contribution to La Revue musicale’s 1924 Le Tombeau de Ronsard, and his response to a 1924 survey about “new music,” Caplet’s interest in classicism emerges as a salient context for understanding his largest postwar composition. Additionally Caplet’s real-time documentation of his creative process and goals in detailed correspondence with his wife, Geneviève, contributes further evidence of Caplet’s pragmatism. Rather than moralistic and reactionary, Le Miroir can be understood in the context of postwar artists attempting to render spirituality less institutional and more personal.

Intervention

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loré Lixenberg
Keyword(s):  
Mezzo Soprano ◽  
Stand Up Comedy

Mezzo soprano Loré Lixenberg looks back at the delights and dangers of collaborative projects, and of working with improvisation in contexts ranging from stand-up comedy to opera. The Intervention reflects on the particular opportunities and challenges that singers face in working with their bodies, and with their personal and dramatic identities.

scholarly journals Seven Songs for Mezzo-Soprano

1895 ◽  
Vol 36 (623) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Sydney Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Mezzo Soprano

Reconciliation in the Cathedral: Isaac's Religion in “Owen-Mass”

10.34690/125 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 6-36
Author(s):  
Роман Александрович Насонов
Keyword(s):  
Song Cycle ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
War Requiem ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Tradition

Статья представляет собой исследование религиозной символики и интерпретацию духовного смысла «Военного реквиема» Бриттена. Воспользовавшись Реквиемом Верди как моделью жанра, композитор отдал ключевую роль в драматургии сочинения эпизодам, созданным на основе военных стихов Оуэна; в результате произведение воспринимается подобно циклу песен в обрамлении частей заупокойной мессы. Военная реальность предстает у Бриттена амбивалентно. Совершая надругательство над древней верой и разбивая чаяния современных людей, война дает шанс возрождению религиозных чувств и символов. Опыт веры, порожденный войной, переживается остро, но при всей своей подлинности зыбок и эфемерен. Церковная традиция хранит веру прочно, однако эта вера в значительной мере утрачивает чистоту и непосредственность, которыми она обладает в момент своего возникновения. Бриттен целенаправленно выстраивает диалог между двумя пластами человеческого опыта (церковным и военным), находит те точки, в которых между ними можно установить контакт. Но это не отменяет их глубокого противоречия. Вера, рождаемая войной, представляет собой в произведении Бриттена «отредактированный» вариант традиционной христианской религии: в ее центре находится не триумфальная победа Христа над злом, а пассивная, добровольно отказавшаяся защищать себя перед лицом зла жертва - не Бог Сын, а «Исаак». Смысл этой жертвы - не в преображении мира, а в защите гуманности человека от присущего ему же стремления к агрессивному самоутверждению. The study of religious symbolism and the interpretation of the spiritual meaning of “War Requiem” by Britten have presentation in this article. Using Verdi's Requiem as a model of the genre, the composer gave a key role in the drama to the episodes based on the war poems by Wilfred Owen; as a result, the work is perceived as a song cycle framed by parts of the funeral mass. The military reality appears ambivalent. While committing a blasphemy against the ancient belief and shattering the aspirations of modern people, the war offers a chance to revive religious feelings and symbols. This experience of war-born faith is felt keenly, but for all its authenticity, it is shaky and ephemeral. The church tradition keeps faith firmly, but this faith largely loses the original purity and immediacy. Britten purposefully builds a dialogue between the two layers of human experience (church and military), finds those points where contact can be established between them. But this does not change their profound antagonism. In Britten's work, faith born of war is an “edited” version of the traditional Christian religion: in its center is not the triumphant victory of Christ over evil, but a passive sacrifice that voluntarily refused to defend itself in the face of evil-not God the Son, but “Isaac.” The meaning of this sacrifice is not in transforming the world, but in protecting the humanity of a person from his inherent desire for aggressive self-assertion.

scholarly journals Structural Pluralism in Gerald Finzi’s Earth and Air and Rain

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Burton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Song Cycle ◽  
Structural Pluralism ◽  
Cycle Structures

The genre of song cycle is complex and heterogeneous. As well as attracting significant contention in relation to matters of typology, the inherent aesthetic issues that arise from any intermedial union of words and music are compounded in the potential narrative consequences of the song cycle. Advocating melopoetic practices, my research seeks to examine the different cycle structures that emerge within the twentieth-century, English repertory. Gerald Finzi’s Earth and Air and Rain, composed in 1936, has a somewhat ambiguous genesis and complex history in performance and publication. This article explores the work’s potential to be characterized by structural pluralism; that is, the possibility that there may be more than one way of understanding and navigating the cycle’s structure. The genre of song cycle is complex and heterogeneous. As well as attracting significant contention in relation to matters of typology, the inherent aesthetic issues that arise from any intermedial union of words and music are compounded in the potential narrative consequences of the song cycle. Advocating melopoetic practices, my research seeks to examine the different cycle structures that emerge within the twentieth-century, English repertory. Gerald Finzi’s Earth and Air and Rain, composed in 1936, has a somewhat ambiguous genesis and complex history in performance and publication. This article explores the work’s potential to be characterized by structural pluralism; that is, the possibility that there may be more than one way of understanding and navigating the cycle’s structure.

scholarly journals Voicing Rupture: Resisting docility through performances of feminine agency in Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Imogen Thirlwall
Keyword(s):  
Song Cycle ◽  
Art Song ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Sexual Agency ◽  
Vocal Technique ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Practices

<p>My experience of learning and performing Arnold Schoenberg’s song cycle, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, can be explored through the lens of Foucault’s ‘docile bodies’ theory – that is, bodies that are ‘subjected, used, transformed, improved’. Participating in the disciplinary practice of self-policing, my obedience to the social, cultural and musical orders shaping western art song performance is enforced through self-imposed internalisation of normative practices and values. The singer’s body – my own body – is regulated in the Foucauldian sense; ‘disciplined’ through training and conditioning to align with normative practices, and, simultaneously, I act as ‘discipliner’ through self-imposed policing and monitoring of my body. The compulsive need to engage in the acts and processes of discipline implies inherent deficiency or deviance; the body must be transformed and ‘corrected’ through the processes of discipline that reflect the internalised value systems a body is measured against. In this exegesis, I explore my processes of self-regulation as disciplined and discipliner, investigating an intersection of ideals and tensions in my pursuit of technical command of vocal technique, obedience to the score, and the expectation of emotional abandon that an expressionist song cycle demands. Framed through narratives of ‘service’ and ‘prohibition’, I position the political anatomy of an eroticised, reproductive female body, exploring resistance and ‘rupture’ through the sexual agency of a disobedient and disruptive female singer.</p>

scholarly journals Voicing Rupture: Resisting docility through performances of feminine agency in Arnold Schoenberg’s Das Buch der hängenden Gärten

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Imogen Thirlwall
Keyword(s):  
Song Cycle ◽  
Art Song ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Sexual Agency ◽  
Vocal Technique ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Social ◽  
Normative Practices

<p>My experience of learning and performing Arnold Schoenberg’s song cycle, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, can be explored through the lens of Foucault’s ‘docile bodies’ theory – that is, bodies that are ‘subjected, used, transformed, improved’. Participating in the disciplinary practice of self-policing, my obedience to the social, cultural and musical orders shaping western art song performance is enforced through self-imposed internalisation of normative practices and values. The singer’s body – my own body – is regulated in the Foucauldian sense; ‘disciplined’ through training and conditioning to align with normative practices, and, simultaneously, I act as ‘discipliner’ through self-imposed policing and monitoring of my body. The compulsive need to engage in the acts and processes of discipline implies inherent deficiency or deviance; the body must be transformed and ‘corrected’ through the processes of discipline that reflect the internalised value systems a body is measured against. In this exegesis, I explore my processes of self-regulation as disciplined and discipliner, investigating an intersection of ideals and tensions in my pursuit of technical command of vocal technique, obedience to the score, and the expectation of emotional abandon that an expressionist song cycle demands. Framed through narratives of ‘service’ and ‘prohibition’, I position the political anatomy of an eroticised, reproductive female body, exploring resistance and ‘rupture’ through the sexual agency of a disobedient and disruptive female singer.</p>

scholarly journals Getting To The Core:

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-83
Author(s):  
Marie-Anne Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
North American ◽  
Song Cycle ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Specific Concept ◽  
And Performance

This article discusses the construction and representation of nature in the composition and performance of Meredith Monk’s song cycle “Facing North” by analyzing the quality of the performing voices, their physicality, and by bringing them into relation to the associations and contexts evoked by the songs’ titles. Based on voice and nature concepts in cultural studies, this article argues that this approach creates a very specific concept of nature, which is artistic and artificial at the same time. Through contextualising the concept of nature established in “Facing North” with a specific, gendered construction of nature as basis of a narrative of North American identity as depicted by musicologist Denise Von Glahn, it becomes evident how the composition and performance of “Facing North” at once accord with and oppose to a gendered concept of nature.

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