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Program notes  –  New Paltz Recital

performed February 1997

To many, the songs of Franz Schubert define the art of Lieder. The exquisite subtlety of his harmonies and the simple, yet profound emotions he explores have been the inspiration of every composer of songs since his time. The four songs presented here reflect on the various complexions of longing. The desire for the absent beloved is a common theme for love poetry, and a fertile beginning for song. In Im Frühling the poet reminisces about a lost love, and the beauties of the early spring that surround him bring the memories back to life. One of Schubert’s favorite devices, the modal shift between major and minor keys, is used here to create a sense of poignancy in the last verse, where the return to the major key is actually sadder than the minor section that preceded it. Ständchen, based on a poem from Cymbeline by Shakespeare, is a joyous serenade. The lover urges his beloved to awake and look out her window by invoking all the forces of nature. Lied der Mignon, one of several songs sung by the character Mignon in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, has a quality of a folk song, or a song learned by rote a long time ago. Mignon’s grief, at first hidden behind her song, bursts out in the central section, only to be suppressed at the end. Suleika I is from a poem collection written jointly by Goethe and his friend/lover Marianne von Willemer. The poems are presented from the point of view of two Arabic lovers who are separated from each other. Suleika imagines the East wind carries greetings from her lover, which cheers her and yet sharpens her longing for him. Here again the masterful alternation between major and minor modes evokes the combined pleasure and pain of thinking about an absent love.

Haydn wrote the cantata Arianna a Naxos during one of his trips to London. Unusually, it is written for and intended to be played on the piano, instead of a chamber orchestra. Ariadne is a princess of Crete. She meets Theseus, prince of Athens, when he is sent to Crete as tribute with a group of young Athenians, to be fed to the monstrous Minotaur. Ariadne falls in love with Theseus, and helps him to slay the Minotaur and free himself and his companions. He promises to bring her back to Athens as his wife. On the way back from Crete, they stop at a deserted island called Naxos. There the god Dionysius appears to Theseus, commanding him to leave Ariadne behind on the island for the god. Thus Ariadne appears in this cantata, and in numerous other musical depictions, abandoned and betrayed. Haydn's characterization of her is breathtaking: showing her before she realizes her predicament, we see a confident, vain, slightly spoiled princess who cannot even imagine the extent of her situation at first. Sure that Theseus is just around the next bush, she sings an exquisite aria for his benefit, to make him rush to her side. Haydn illustrates her coyness with clever pauses, as she listens to see if her singing is having any effect. When she discovers the Greeks sailing away from Naxos, we see the imperious princess calling down vengeance from the gods, and a girl suddenly without resources, all at once. This masterful piece belies the common wisdom that Haydn was a weak dramatic composer; even if his full-fledged operas never achieved this subtlety, Ariadne is fully the equal of Susanna, Elvira, or Fiordiligi!

In 1995 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Paul Hindemith. He remains a somewhat controversial figure in 20th century music, more for his theoretical ideas than for his compositions. Das Marienleben illustrates this well. In 1923, Hindemith, then a rising star of German Expressionism, published this song cycle based on a cycle of 15 poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. In 1948, now as a leading exponent of the Gebrauchsmusik movement, he released a revision of these songs. While a few of the songs (#10-12) remain essentially unchanged, Hindemith explains in an extensive introduction how he rethought and reorganized the song cycle, rejecting a large bulk of his earlier ideas in the process. The earlier songs, he claims, were difficult to sing, the vocal line did not relate to the piano part or sometimes, the poetry, and the songs were not thematically linked to each other to create a unified cycle. In the revised version, his earlier, expressionistic style has largely been replaced with a more conventional melodic line, a consciously restricted harmonic language, and a highly ordered compositional style that includes a variety of formal devices (passacaglia, fugue, theme and variations) and key relationships and motives that carry symbolic meaning and reappear throughout the cycle. To many, these alterations smack of the academician 'correcting' the original but erratic genius of his youth. I feel, however, that Hindemith's later style complements the philosophical immediacy and clear imagery of the poems. The harmonic language may be simpler, but at the same time it embraces a broad spectrum, from Renaissance modality almost to Webern-esque atonality; the studied formalism is not only brilliantly executed, but filled with expressive detail. The two versions of the cycle can be seen in the same light as Schubert's habit of multiple settings of the same poem. Both versions certainly deserve more performances than they commonly receive.

The poem cycle Das Marienleben was a minor work in Rilke's ouvre. His portrayal of the Virgin Mary is drawn from Biblical events and evokes many Medieval images, but is filled with deep psychological insight. One felicity of this cycle is the variety achieved by the change in perspective; Rilke explores third person narrative, the immediacy of the first person voice, and even the highly unusual second person address to the subject (#7 - the Birth of Christ) to paint his portrait. Note how Rilke and Hindemith use minor references to Mary in the Bible to moving and brilliant effect: Mary's gentle prompt to Jesus at the wedding at Cana, "They have no wine," becomes a defining moment in both their lives -- the point at which his destiny becomes fixed, and hers becomes tragic. Also, the passing reference to the robe woven without seam in John 19:23-24 becomes, in #10 (Before the Passion), a metaphor for Mary's love and tenderness for her son.

Today, due to the cycle's extreme length and variety of tessitura, we are presenting only a portion of the entire work. The songs I have chosen, for the most part, are in Hindemith's simpler, more melodic style; with the exception of #9 (On the Wedding at Cana) the more sophisticated formal structures are not presented here. I regret the violence that this does to the scheme Hindemith constructed so carefully in his revision; I hope one day to present the entire cycle.

© Pamela Dellal