Recital: Marie-Elise Boyer '23 DMA, Collaborative Piano

Program Note

“War nowadays crawls on hands and knees in the colour of inanimate things with no light or sound. It is no longer the place for music. Hers the rôle to refresh and invigorate – to nerve man to fight the real battle of life – to provide him with fresh visions of eternal beauty: things which Bach and Beethoven do better than all the battle-hymns and patriotic songs in the world.” Those lines were written by British composer William Edmondstoune Duncan in an article of The Musical Times in September 1914, a few weeks after the beginning of World War I. Directly inspired by war matters, the music presented in this program—although written at different times by four composers and poets from different cultures—is united by common themes: pain, grief and mourning—naturally—but also peace, hope and healing. Each of those poets and composers has been more or less directly affected by armed conflicts—poetry and music have been a way for them to process the atrocities generated by war. For musicians who enjoy a life of peace and freedom in a country such as the United States, performing music connected to the theme of war is also a way to acknowledge the sacrifice made by soldiers and civilians, who gave their life to fight for those rights and privileges. This program is dedicated to all the people who have fought in the past, are fighting now, and will keep fighting in the future; the ones we must thank for giving us hope and allowing us to believe in a better world—a world in which peace and joy have a place.
        Austrian composer Alexander von Zemlinsky—teacher of Arnold Schönberg, Alma Mahler, Erich Korngold and Alban Berg, among others—was mostly known and admired for his work as a conductor in Vienna and Prague at the turn of the twentieth century. He was especially successful with the music of Mozart and Wagner but also advocated for new music and promoted works by musicians such as Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith, and Kurt Weill. As a composer, however, he remained faithful to a more conventional style, inspired by Brahms, Wolf and Mahler. The four songs composing the opus 8, published in 1901, form the beginning of a new style in Zemlinsky’s music writing: the piano part is given an orchestral texture and a place matching the importance of the voice. Zemlinsky’s conversion from Judaism to Christianity occurred at the time he wrote those songs, which can explain his choice of texts, connected to biblical references—such as the Holy Cross in Turmwächterlied and the Crucifixion in Tod in Ähren. The last words of the latter are Jesus’s last words on the Cross (New Testament, John 19:30). Turmwächterlied and Und hat der Tag, on texts by Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen, may be interpreted as a reflection of the human faith in God: to protect and give strength to the people expecting imminent threats in the first poem, and to grant them a place in Heaven in the second. The poems by Detiev von Liliencron, Mit Trommeln und Pfeifen and Tod in Ähren, are more directly connected to war: one tells the story of a drummer boy who lost his leg at war and can no longer suffer the music he used to love so much, and the other poem relates the fate of a soldier agonizing in a field of wheat and corn, in complete anonymity. Zemlinsky’s music sways between intimate and quasi-religious character, and very complex, passionate and intense textures that remind the listener of both Mahler and Wagner orchestral and harmonic qualities.
        Written by German composer Kurt Weill in 1942— one year before he became an American citizen, the four songs on Walt Whitman poems are a musical tour de force meshing cabaret-like features, military rhythms and tunes, jazzy colors, as well as lyrical and dramatic gestures in both piano and vocal parts. The poetry was not only inspired by the experience of Whitman’s younger brother George in the American Civil War (he joined the Union Army, fought and survived many battles) but also those of wounded and dying soldiers that Walt Whitman visited in Washington D.C. military hospitals. Those four poems are part of Drum-Taps, a collection of civil war-related poetry: Beat! Beat! Drums! is a call to join the fight and defend the Union, O Captain! My Captain! an homage to Abraham Lincoln, and Come up from the Fields, Father and Dirge for Two Veterans depict the dreadful reality of the death of soldiers, hitting the loved ones who stayed home. Weill’s choice, when selecting those four specific poems to set to music, was undoubtedly driven by the feeling of love that unites them and prevails over war’s destructive nature.
        Unlike Zemlinsky and Weill who fled their countries to find safety in America during World War II, Ukraine-born Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev decided to actually come back to the Soviet Union in 1936—after fleeing his country, following the October Revolution—and had to deal with the controlling Soviet regime that critically affected artists’ creative freedom. Most of Prokofiev’s works from this time until 1946 express a reaction to the war events; the three war piano sonatas (numbers 6, 7 and 8), composed in 1939–44, are possibly the most obvious example. The first sonata for violin and piano opus 80 was written between 1938 and 1946. Although it does not contain any words explicitly connecting it to war, the sonata expresses the conflicting feelings generated by the devastating events of that time: grief, anger, but also compassion and hope. The first movement begins with a quiet and lonely a cappella theme wandering in the lower range of the piano—possibly representing the sense of loss and loneliness in the aftermath of war—quickly disturbed by a rather abrupt melodic figure creeping out of the piano line in the violin, landing on a threatening thrill. This feeling of threat does not leave until the ghostly last section with the cold wind-like scales in the violin, making their way through the vertical chords in the piano moving steadily from the heavenly upper range toward the more earthly basses. The ferocious second movement expresses the violence of war through conflicting violin and piano parts: heroic themes suggest at times a Poulenc-like fashion, and contrasting moments of truce feature somewhat naive themes led by ironic accompaniments in the violin. It is with a more impressionistic manner— almost like Debussy—that the third movement brings a state of relief; the continuous flow of pianissimo sixteenth-note triplets create a dreamy texture that allows the listener to escape the barbarous reality and forget the horrors of war. The violin and the piano are finally reconciled for the first time in the fourth and last movement which sounds like a celebration in the form of a victorious peasant dance. The return of the ghostly section from the first movement brings some kind of closure to the whole sonata, ending on a peaceful note of hope.
        If the musical styles of both Prokofiev and Francis Poulenc— French pianist and composer—present certain similarities, they most likely reflect a profound and mutual respect between the two composers; the last musical work written by Poulenc, his oboe and piano sonata, is in fact dedicated to Prokofiev. Poulenc served during both World War I and II, and was undeniably deeply affected by the numerous abominations and atrocities of those conflicts. The four songs selected for this program feature texts by poets who had distinct personal experiences with war; however, all of them are united by a sense of humility, intimacy, grief and tenderness. In 1942, poet of the French Resistance Louis Aragon wrote the poem C, a call for resistance against Nazism disguised as a medieval tale. Le disparu relates the horrendous fate of Robert Desnos’s friend who was arrested during the July 1942 “rafle du Vel d’Hiv’” (the Vel d’Hiv’ roundup) during which French police arrested about 13,000 Jews in two days—who were then sent to concentration and extermination camps. Desnos himself died in a concentration camp in Czechoslo-vakia, because of his work within the French Resistance. Born in Italy to a Polish mother, French poet Guillaume Apollinaire volunteered to serve in the French Army during World War I and was wounded in 1916; he died of complications in 1918. Bleuet is the nickname given to young French Army recruits wearing their new blue (“bleu”) uniform. The calligram, written in 1916, is a portrait of one of those newly enlisted soldiers; he knows “Death better than Life” and is probably about to die in the dreadful trenches. The last song, Priez pour paix, features a poem written by French Duke and poet Charles d’Orléans, who wrote poetry during his 25 years of captivity in England during the fifteenth century. This poem is a prayer to the Virgin Mary to banish war and bring peace, “the true treasure of joy.”

Alexander von Zemlinsky | Turmwächterlied und andere Gesänge, op. 8

Turmwächterlied
Und hat der Tag all seine Qual
Mit Trommeln und Pfeifen
Tod in Ähren

Texts

Kurt Weill | Four Walt Whitman Songs

Beat! Beat! Drums!
Oh Captain! My Captain!
Come up from the Fields, Father
Dirge for Two Veterans

Texts

Beat! Beat! Drums!

Beat! Beat! Drums! – Blow! Bugles! Blow!
Through the windows – through doors – burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation,
 Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet – no happiness must he have now with his bride,
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain,
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums – so shrill you bugles blow.

Beat! Beat! Drums! – Blow! Bugles! Blow!
Over the traffic of cities – over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses?
No sleepers must sleep in those beds –
No bargainers’ bargains by day – no brokers or speculators – would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? Would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums – you bugles wilder blow.

Beat! Beat! Drums! – Blow! Bugles! Blow!
Make no parley – stop for no expostulation,
Mind not the timid – mind not the weeper or prayer,
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man,
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties,
Make even the trestles to shake the dead where the lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump O terrible drums – so loud you bugles blow.


Oh Captain! My Captain!

Oh Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting;
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! Heart! Heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


Come up from the Fields, Father

Come up from the fields, Father, here’s a letter from our Pete,
And come to the front door, Mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ‘tis autumn,
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,

Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,
Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,
But now from the fields come Father, come at the daughter’s call,
And come to the entry Mother, to the front door come right away.

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,
O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!
All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only;

Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,
At present low, but will soon be better.

Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,)

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,
She with thin form presently dressed in black,
By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from lids escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.


Dirge for Two Veterans

The last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

Lo, the moon ascending,
Up from the east the silvery round moon,
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon,
Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,
And I hear the sound of coming full-key’d bugles,
All the channels of the city streets they are flooding,
As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,
And the small drums steady whirring
And every blow of the great convulsive drums,
Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father,
(In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell,
Two veterans son and father dropt together,
And the double grave awaits them.)

And nearer blow the bugles,
And the drums strike more convulsive,
And the daylight o’er the pavement quite has faded,
And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,
The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin’d,
(‘Tis some mother’s large transparent face,
In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march you please me!
O moon immense with your silvery face you soothe me!
O my soldier twain! O my veterans passing to burial!
What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers,
My heart gives you love.                                                                        

Walt Whitman

Sergei Prokofiev | Sonata No. 1 in F Minor, op. 80 for violin and piano

Andante assai
Allegro brusco
Andante
Allegrissimo

Francis Poulenc

C.
Le disparu
Bleuet
Priez pour paix

Texts

Many thanks to Xiao Xiao, Mark Tempesta, Sophia Szokolay, Samuel Rosner,
Cameron Stowe, Jonathan Feldman, Kayo Iwama, Margo Garrett, Tanya Blaich,
JJ Penna, Susan Gouthro, and David Boyer-Brown,
for their collaboration, inspiration, support and help in the making of this recital.