RECITAL 1992--PROGRAM NOTES
Marin Marais: Variations on Les folies d'Espagne
Robert Muczynski: Sonata for Flute and Piano
Ned Rorem: Book of Hours for flute and harp
- Intermission -
Elliott Carter: Scrivo in Vento for flute alone
Gabriel Pierné: Sonata op. 36
The Portuguese term folia refers to a dance in triple time dating from the 1400s. The word is related to the English "folly" and French folie, and refers to a dance so fast and noisy that the dancers seemed "out of their minds." By the late 1600's a slower version had evolved which threw the accent from the first beat to the second in every other bar, and fixed the harmonization in the symmetrical pattern used by Marais - not to mention a host of other composers from Lully to Rachmaninov. Marais, a virtuoso of the viola da gamba, composed the Variations for that instrument, but pointed out in the preface to the first edition that he had endeavored to make them suitable also for the organ, harpsichord, violin, lute, treble viol, theorbo, guitar, recorder, transverse flute, and oboe (!). As deployed by Marais, La Folia reflects far more the dignity and refinement of the royal court than the mad dance recalled in its name.
Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, and Walter Piston, students of the famous French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, established a distinctively American compositional style in the middle decades of our century. Although Robert Muczynski did not study with Boulanger, his Flute Sonata is a model of the virtues espoused by her American students: clarity, economy, transparency of texture, and absence of pretension. He also demonstrates a very American relish for the drama and wit of strongly accented, irregular meters, which give his fast movements a vigorous rhythmic drive. Although Muczynski's name may not be widely known, this Sonata has enjoyed widespread popularity, not least because of its challenging but idiomatic writing for both flute and piano.
FS
My intent [in writing Book of Hours for flute and harp] was no more and no less than to concoct a gracious vehicle for the two instruments, setting them in relief as individuals and as a married pair. Today . . . I hear this music as a garland of muted prayers uttered during a long day of rest between two massive efforts. I had, in fact, just completed a restless orchestral poem called Assembly and Fall and was about to begin a restless organ suite called A Quaker Reader. The orchestral poem was a realization of a disorganized dream fantasy; the organ suite was to become a belated homage to my own religion. Book of Hours was thus the luxuriant entr'acte - songs-without-words about memories of the Roman Church which, having been taboo in my Protestant childhood, always vaguely gave off a sense of sin.
The monklike simplicity of the construction and of the sonic language should need no more than the briefest translation. Matins is formed by two diatonic ten-measure periods, each the mirror image of the other. Lauds, after a prologue of eleven identical peals on the harp over which the flute climbs from its lowest to its highest rung, becomes a quiet scherzo based on the opening material. Prime: the softest of tunes five times iterated through the softest of breezes. Terce is in two large sections--for flute alone, then for harp alone. This leads without pause to Sext, a sad question posed straightforwardly five times by the flute and answered deviously five times by the harp. None is four rough statements interspersed (without speed change) with four gentle statements, finishing off with a last rough statement. Vespers is the prologue of Lauds played backward: the flute now descends the ladder as the harp's eleven peals fade into the final Compline, the same design as Matins but with the parts reversed and sounding a tone lower.
- Ned Rorem
Scrivo in Vento, for flute alone, dedicated to the wonderful flutist and friend, Robert Aitken, takes its title from a poem of Petrarch who lived around Avignon from 1326 to 1353. It uses the flute to present contrasting musical ideas and registers to suggest the paradoxical nature of the poem. It was first performed July 20, 1991, (coincidentally on Petrarch's 687th birthday) at the XVIIIe Rencontres de la Chartreuse of the Centre Acanthes devoted to my music at the Festival of Avignon, France, by Robert Aitken.
- Elliott Carter
Beato in sogno et di languir contento,
d'abbraciar l'ombre et seguir l'aura estiva,
nuoto per mar che non à fondo o riva;
solco onde, e 'n rena fondo, et scrivo in vento;
. . .
- Petrarch, Rime Sparse 212
Blessed in sleep and satisfied to languish,
to embrace shadows, and to pursue the summer breeze,
I swim through a sea that has no floor or shore,
I plow the waves and found my house on sand and write on the wind;
. . .
- Translated by Robert M. Durling*
Gabriel Pierné enjoyed a brilliant and prolific career as composer, conductor, organist and teacher. A musical conservative in the tradition of Saint-Saëns, and of Franck, with whom he studied, Pierné nonetheless used his prestige as a conductor to promote the works of such disparate contemporaries as Fauré and Stravinsky, Ravel and Milhaud. Pierné wrote his Sonata, op. 36 for the violinist Jacques Thibaud, and transcribed it later for the flute, apparently at the suggestion of his publisher. His transcription of course accommodates the more limited compass of the flute, but it leaves flutists on their own to cope with his far-reaching arcs of melody, conceived for an instrument which has no need to pause for breath. This, and the florid and very demanding writing for the piano, perhaps explain why this fine sonata has not been more popular with flutists. Its subtle cyclic form and organic thematic development show the influence of Franck, while stylistically it is perhaps closer to the Gallic elegance of Fauré. David Cox, writing in the New Grove Dictionary, aptly describes the Sonata as "passionate and brilliant, in every way rewarding."
- Fenwick Smith
*From Petrarch's Lyric Poems, edited by Robert M. Durling. Harvard University Press, copyright 1976 by Robert M. Durling.
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