Recital: Caroline Kathleen Nielson '23 DMA, Mezzo-Soprano

Hector Berlioz | Les nuits d'été, op. 7

Villlanelle
Le spectre de la rose
Sur les lagunes
Absence
Au cimitière
L'île inconnue

Texts

INTERMISSION

Srul Irving Glick | I Never Saw Another Butterfly

To Olga
Yes, that's the way things are
The little mouse
On a sunny evening
Narrative
The butterfly

Texts

I Never Saw another Butterfly

To Olga

Listen!
The boat whistle has sounded now.
And we must sail
Out toward an unknown port.

We’ll sail a long, long way
And dreams will turn to truth.
Oh, how sweet the name Morocco!
Listen!
Now it’s time.

The wind sings songs of far away,
Just look up to heaven
And think about the violets.

Listen!
Now it’s time.

Alena Synkova (attributed)


Yes, that’s the way things are

In Terezin in the so-called park
A queer old grandad sits
Somewhere there in the so-called park
He wears a beard down to his lap
And on his head, a little cap.

Hard crusts he crumbles with his gums,
He’s only got one single tooth.
My poor old man with working gums,
Instead of soft rolls, lentil soup.
My poor old grey-beard.

Koleba: Kosek, Lowy, Bachner


The little mouse

A mousie sat upon a shelf,
Catching fleas in his coat of fur.
But he couldn’t catch her - what chagrin!
She’d hidden ‘way inside his skin.
He turned and wriggled, knew no rest,
That flea was such a nasty pest!

His daddy came
And searched his coat.
He caught the flea and off he ran
To cook her in the frying pan.
The little mouse cried, “Come and see!
For lunch we’ve got a nice, fat flea!”

Koleba: Kosek, Lowy, Bachner


On a sunny evening

On a purple, sun-shot evening
Under wide-flowering chestnut trees
Upon the threshold full of dust
Yesterday, today, days are all like these.

Trees flower forth in beauty,
Lovely, too, their very wood all gnarled and old
That I am half afraid to peer
Into their crowns of green and gold.

The sun has made a veil of gold
So lovely that my body aches.
Above, the heavens shriek with blue
Convinced I’ve smiled by some mistake.
The world’s abloom and seems to smile.
I want to fly but where, how high?
If in barbed wire, things can bloom
Why couldn’t I? I will not die!

Anonymous


Narrative

…We got used to standing in line at 7 o’clock in the morning, and 12 noon and again at seven o’clock in the evening. We stood in a long line with a plate in our hand, into which they ladled a little warmed-up water with a salty or a coffee flavor. Or else they gave us a few potatoes. We got used to sleeping without a bed, to saluting every uniform, not to walk on the sidewalks and then again to walk on the sidewalks. We got used to undeserved slaps, blows, and executions. We got accustomed to seeing people die in their own excrement, to seeing piled-up coffins full of corpses, to seeing the sick amidst dirt and filth and to seeing the helpless doctors. We got used to it, that from time to time, one thousand unhappy souls would come here and that, from time to time, another thousand unhappy souls would go away…

Petr Fischl


The butterfly

The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would singz
against a white stone…

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ‘way up high.
It went away I’m sure because it wished to
kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the very last one.
Butterflies don’t live here,
in the ghetto.

Pavel Friedmann

Charles Ives | Songs

Down East
There is a Lane
Ann Street
The See'r
At the River
The Housatonic at Stockbridge
Sunrise

Texts

Down East

Songs! Visions of my homeland,
come with strains of childhood,
Come with tunes we sang in school days
and with songs from mother's heart;
Way down east in a village by the sea,
stands an old, red farm house
that watches o'er the lea;
All that is best in me,
lying deep in memory,
draws my heart where I would be,
nearer to thee.
Ev'ry Sunday morning,
when the chores were almost done,
from that little parlor
sounds the old melodeon,
"Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee,"
With those strains a stronger hope
comes nearer to me.

Charles Ives


There is a Lane

There is a lane which winds towards the bay
Passing a wood where the little children play;
There, summer evenings of days long past,
Learned I a love song, and my heart still holds it fast!

Charles Ives


Ann Street

(Broadway!)
Quaint name, Ann Street.
Width of same, ten feet.
Barnum’s mob - Ann Street,
Far from obsolete.

Narrow, yes. Ann Street,
But business, both feet.
(Nassau crosses Ann Street)
Sun just hits Ann Street,
Then it quits–some greet!
Rather short, Ann Street…

Maurice Morris


The See’r

An old man with a straw in his mouth
sat all day long before the village grocery store;
he liked to watch the funny things a going, going, going by!

Charles Ives


At the River

Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?

Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
Yes, we’ll gather at the river
That flows by the throne of God.

Robert Lowry


The Housatonic at Stockbridge

Contented river! In thy dreamy realm
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:
Thou beautiful!
From ev’ry dreamy hill
what eye but wanders with thee at thy will,
Contented river!
And yet over-shy
To mask thy beauty from the eager eye;
Hast thou a thought to hide from field and town?
In some deep current of the sunlit brown
Ah! there’s a restive ripple,
And the swift red leaves
September’s firstlings faster drift;
Wouldst thou away, dear stream?
Come, whisper near!
I also of much resting have a fear:
Let me tomorrow thy companion be,
By fall and shallow to the adventurous sea!

Robert Underwood Johnson


Sunrise

A light low in the East, –
As I lie there, it shows but does not move –
A light – as a thought, forgotten, comes again.

The forest world is waking,
A thousand leaves are beginning to gleam.

Later on, as I rise,
It shows through the trees
And lights the dark grey rock
And something in the mind,
And brings the quiet day.

And tomorrow – tomorrow –
The light as a thought forgotten comes again –
And with it ever the hope of the New Day.

Charles Ives

Program notes

Hector Berlioz was one of the most prominent French Romantic composers, having lived from 1803-1869. He is primarily known for his symphonic and vocal works, such as the Symphonie fantastique and La damnation de Faust. Though he composed roughly fifty songs during his lifetime, Berlioz’ most important contribution to the genre of French mélodie was his song cycle, Les nuits d’été. Dedicated to the expression and form of his selected poetry, Berlioz provides the singer with lush, operatic melodies in the popular “romance” style. For this cycle, Berlioz chose six poems from Théophile Gautier’s La Comédie de la mort, a large collection of poems published in 1838. A contemporary of Berlioz, Gautier’s poetry epitomized the Romantic era, with themes of love and longing dominating his verses. In this collection, Gautier also focuses on death and its sublime role as eternal relief from the tortures of life. Gautier’s solemn fascination with death during this period was largely due to the staggering number of deaths sweeping the country as a result of various epidemics in the 19th century.
        The first version of Les nuits d’été was completed in 1841 for mezzo soprano, tenor, and piano, with only the fifth mélodie, “Au cimitière,” notated for tenor. Berlioz created the familiar orchestral version in 1856, transposing “Le spectre de la rose” and “Sur les lagunes” into lower keys. Following Berlioz’ specifications for the later version, an orchestral performance would require a soprano, contralto, baritone, and tenor. Whether performed with piano or orchestra, the work is most often heard today with one singer in comfortable keys. The orchestral version showcases Berlioz’ genius for exploiting the unique timbres of various instruments for expressive means, but the original vocal/piano version places primary focus on his expressive melodies and phrases, both fragmented and extended. Most modern performances of the cycle are by mezzo soprano; this performance in both original and down-transposed keys captures Berlioz’ fondness for low-voiced female singers.
        Les nuits d’été is bookended by charming, brisk melodies that feature similar rhythmic patterns. The first piece of the set, “Villanelle,” features frequent harmonic modulations in flowing counterpoint with talk of the arrival of spring. In the final piece, “L’île inconnue,” Berlioz complements the speaker’s invitation to the “unknown isle” with the 6/8 meter typical of the nautical barcarole. In the cycle’s second piece, “Le spectre de la rose,” the sensuality of Gautier’s scene is matched by Berlioz’ epitomic operatic melodies and expressive text painting. In “Sur les lagunes,” the singer expresses deep mournfulness through the widest vocal range heard in the cycle, as a lamenting refrain divides the third song’s three sections. The texture of the fourth piece, “Absence,” is uniquely sparse in texture, reflecting the loneliness of the text in rondo form. “Au cimitière,” the fifth in the set, is given a lyrical, legato melody, as “ominous and sweet,” as the dove in Gautier’s poem. Throughout the cycle, Berlioz uses the natural tensions of traditional harmony to elevate Gautier’s poetry to dramatic and sophisticated melodies.

I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944 is a collection of poetry written by children in the Terezin concentration camp during World War II. Canadian composer Srul Irving Glick (1934-2002) set six of these poems to music in his 1968 eponymous song cycle commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Company for contralto Maureen Forrester. During his prolific career, Glick composed within a variety of musical genres, including cycles for voice and piano, concertos, and Jewish liturgical music. This cycle is one of several by Glick that commemorate the atrocities of the Holocaust.
        Terezin (German: Theresienstadt) was a ghetto and concentration camp in former Czechoslovakia that served primarily as a checkpoint for prisoners eventually taken to Auschwitz. The victims were primarily Jewish Czech nationals, many of them children. There was a rich cultural life in Terezin, as many of the people there were scholars, artists, musicians, and writers. The poetry in the collection was written by the children of Terezin in secret classes, and the works are kept in the Jewish Museum in Prague. The poems chosen by Glick for this cycle display the horrific events of the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust through the lens of its affected children; the texts communicate both the beautiful naivety and heart-wrenching bluntness of children as they sought to make sense of the barbarism around them.
        Glick evokes the sounds and struggles described in the poems with frequent dissonance and tone clusters, as in the first movement, “To Olga.” The second piece of the cycle, “Yes, That’s the Way Things Are,” reveals a child’s view of an elderly man in Terezin and is the only song in the set that references Jewish liturgical music. The piano part references the Mourners Kaddish twice, which, as a Jewish prayer for sanctification recited at funerals, ominously foreshadows the likely death of the old prisoner. “The Little Mouse” is the most light-hearted of the cycle, with the scherzando movements of a resident mouse providing the children rare comic relief. The slow but relentless rhythms in “On a Sunny Evening” indicate this anonymous child’s inner conflict when faced with a seemingly hopeful sunny day in the concentration camp. Glick pairs Petr Fischl’s prose in “Narrative” with a recitative vocal delivery and sparse piano texture, bookended by jarringly dissonant clock bells. The final song of the set, “The Butterfly,” portrays a radiant yellow butterfly struggling to survive in the concentration camp through fluttering figures in the piano, while the fragmented form and delivery of the song suggests that the author, Pavel Friedmann realizes his fate may be similar to that of this butterfly.

Born in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1874, Charles Ives was one of the leading American modernist composers until his death in 1954. Throughout his musical career, Ives experimented with a number of modern musical practices including polytonality, polyrhythm, quarter tones, and aleatoric music, which he frequently combined with traditional hymn and folk tune quotations. He was heavily influenced by New England writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his belief in transcendentalism guided him closely in life and music.
        Ives’ music can present the listener with an overwhelming aural experience as multiple musical events occur simultaneously. In music, Ives finds copious opportunities to reflect the complexity of nature, noting that “Nature loves analogy and abhors repetition and explanation” (Cowell 142). According to Ives, therefore, the understanding of a musical statement is a process that takes time and requires the whole person; it is an ultimate, universal process.
        Charles Ives composed in a number of musical genres for varying instruments, including sonatas, symphonies, and chamber works. His largest collection of songs for voice was published in 1922 and is entitled 114 Songs. Six of the seven songs on this program (with the exception of “Sunrise”) come from this collection. Ives wrote a large number of his own texts, including that heard in the first piece, “Down East,” from his earlier cycle, Five Street Songs (1894). In this song, Ives showcases his skill for quoting and assimilating hymn tunes into a modern recollection of the past. In “At the River,” Ives uses a portion of Robert Lowry’s religious text, also set by Aaron Copland and appearing in Ives’ 4 Songs Based on Hymntune Themes. Ives’ setting presents a skeptical view of religion through inquisitive harmonies and displaced rhythmic relationships between the voice and piano.
        “There is a Lane” is the simplest of this set in its form, harmony, and rhythm, as it presents a redemptive view of childhood from Ives’ perspective. “Ann Street” and “The See’r” display bustling scenes with rhythmic complexity. The text of “Ann Street” was originally published by Maurice Morris in the New York Herald Tribune and describes a three-block-long street in the financial district of Manhattan that was the home of Barnum’s American Museum, in operation from 1841-1865. In “The Housatonic at Stockbridge,” Ives uses Robert Underwood Johnson’s text about the river in the third song of his 1914 cycle, Three Places in New England. The piece features a number of typical Ives practices, including polyrhythm and polytonality, as well as the adaptation of Isaac Woodbury’s hymntune, “Dorrance.”
        Ives composed his final piece, “Sunrise,” for voice, violin, and piano, in 1926. The text of the piece, written by Ives, conveys the recurring hope of a new day that is born from the sun’s predictable rising. The counterpoint between the violin and voice culminates in a tone cluster that reveals no resolution of the piece’s dissonance. Ives was, after all, a lover of dissonance, through which lens he perceives the power and permanence of nature as a means of experiencing some degree of the sublime.

Sources

Cairns, David. Discovering Berlioz: Essays, Reviews, Talks. London: Toccata Press, 2019.
Cowell, Henry and Sidney Cowell. Charles Ives and His Music. New York: Da Capo Press,1983.
Evelyn, George. “Words, Music, and Ethnic Elements in Srul Irving Glick’s I never saw another butterfly.” DMA diss.,     University of North Texas, 1981.
Glick, Srul Irving. I never saw another butterfly: A cycle of songs to children’s poems from the concentration camp at Terezen (1942-1944). Willowdale, Ont: Leeds Music, 1972. 
“Jewish Prayers: Mourners Kaddish.” Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 1998 - 2021. Accessed March 13, 2021. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-mourners-kaddish.
Kimball, Carol. Song: A Guide to Art Song Style and Literature. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2006.
“Music.” Srul Irving Glick. The Glick Society. Accessed March 13, 2021.https://www.srulirvingglick.com/.
Rushton, Julian. “Berlioz and the Mezzo-Soprano.” Berlioz: Scenes from the Life and Work.  Edited by Peter Bloom. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008.
Song of America. Hampsong Foundation, 2021. Accessed March 13, 2021.https://songofamerica.net/.
Turner, W. J. Berlioz: The Man and His Work. New York: Vienna House, 1934.