Ravinia 2021 - Issue 4

AN7H2N< BARLICH (7H2MAS) D2RA .ALLM8S (MAHLER) string quartet moves into the foreground in Variation 2, with a single, brief contribution by the flute. Variation 3 is a gentle piece in the style of a waltz. The quintet bursts back to life in the mercurial ( Presto leggiero ) Variation 4 in F-sharp minor. The slow ( Largo di mol- to, con grand’ espressione ), highly chromatic Variation 5 in F-sharp major stretches the theme to its greatest distance from the orig- inal, which the “Tempo del Tema” restores. Beach concludes with Variation 6 in A major, followed by a final hearing of the partsong theme, now scored for flute and string quartet. AUGUSTA READ THOMAS (b. 1964) Upon Wings of Words One of the most dynamic compositional voices of her generation, Augusta Read Thomas is a Grammy Award winner, Pulitzer Prize finalist, Board Member of the American Music Center, and the Chicago Tribune 2016 Chicagoan of the Year. Thomas serves as Pro- fessor of Composition at the University of Chicago, where she founded the Center for Contemporary Composition in 2016. Previ- ously, she taught at the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University as Wyatt Professor of Music, Tanglewood Music Cen- ter, and Aspen Music Festival. In addition, Thomas was the longest-serving Mead Com- poser-in-Residence with the Chicago Sym- phony Orchestra (1997–2006). Born in Glen Cove, NY, Thomas studied at Northwestern University, Yale University, and the Royal Academy of Music in London and was a Bun- ting Fellow at Radcliffe College and a Junior Fellow at Harvard University. Her composi- tion teachers included William Karlins, Alan Stout, Jacob Druckman, and Oliver Knussen. She has received numerous compositional honors, including the prestigious Interna- tional Orpheus Prize (for her chamber opera Ligeia ); awards from The Siemens Founda- tion in Munich, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial, Koussevitz- ky, and Fromm Foundations; The Rudolph Nissim Award from ASCAP; the Third Cen- tury Award from the Office of Copyrights and Augusta Read Thomas Patents in Washington, DC; and the Lancast- er Symphony Orchestra Composer Award, the oldest award of its kind in the nation. Thomas composed UponWings of Words: Em- ily Dickinson Settings (2021) for soprano and string quartet on a commission from NEXUS Chamber Music. This performance at the Ra- vinia Festival marks the world premiere. The four selected poems—“Snow flakes.” (c. late 1858), “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” (c. early 1862), “The Sea of Sunset” (c. early 1862), and “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” (c. 1872)—provide Thomas with contrasting images, a celebration of nature through capti- vating imagery, and open vowels for good vo- cal production. Verses by the reclusive Am- herst, MA, poet have regularly inspired Thomas’s compositions: “Emily Dickinson’s poems are intensely personal, intellectual, in- trospective, and offer a meditation on life, death, and poetic creation; her poems share a close observation of nature as well as consid- eration of religious and philosophical issues.” The voice and poetry are integral parts of Thomas’s compositional process: “For me, the human voice—possibly the most subtle, complex, and fragile yet forceful, flexible, seductive, and persuasive carrier of musical ideas and meanings—has always been an in- spiration for and influence upon my entire musical thinking. I sing when I compose. I adore reading poems, and cherish the oppor- tunity to set them to music.”This intimate un- derstanding of vocal production and textual interpretation elucidates Thomas’s expressive markings within the score of Upon Wings of Words , which suggest poetic meaning to the performer while opening innumerable ap- proaches to its rendering in performance: “with an inner smile,” “like shimmering sunshine,” “as if to dismiss and get rid of the unwanted Prig,” and “like leaves being blown off a tree due to a large gale,” as examples. Throughout, Thomas repeats words and sylla- bles for emphasis and utilizes the open-vowel “ah” and “ha” to delineate the structure and to mark lighter, even comical moments. The overarching organization could be described as a large-scale hemiola with a EPil\ 'ickinson 'ecePEer or earl\ three-part form superimposed on a two-part structure. The score is divided into two parts: the first roughly corresponds to the first two poems (“Snow flakes.” and “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”), and the second, including a prefatory transition and later continuation, contains the second two poems. Thomas de- scribes the work as dividing into three “arcs” distinguished by character and tempo con- trast. The first corresponds to Part I (animat- ed, dramatic; quarter = 88–96), the second to the beginning of Part II (distant, dissonant; quarter = 54), and the third to Part II Contin- ued (energetic, animated; quarter = 88–96). Scholars have differing views on the rela- tionship of the words “Snow flakes.” to the remainder of the poem. Some interpret them as one of the few titles of Dickinson’s poetic output. Other consider them an integral part of this “riddle poem,” whose meaning would be indecipherable without prior knowledge that the verses refer to “Snow flakes.” “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” has been called a “definition poem” that expounds on the meaning of the opening word. In this in- stance, Dickinson represents Hope as a bird that finds safe haven within the soul, where it remains even amid turmoil. “The Sea of Sunset” paints a warm portrait of nightfall over the Pacific Ocean with its spec- tacular variegated colors and ships disappear- ing over the horizon. “Tell all the truth but tell it slant” encourages the listener to approach truth from an angle, with a twist or spin on it. Truth is too brilliant to tackle head-on, but re- turning to it continually at a slant allows one to confront truth gradually. Though not ex- emplified in this poem, Dickinson was known for her use of “slant rhyme,” which involves words with similar but not identical rhymes. An alternate version of “The Sea at Sunset” in which the final line reads “Dip—and vanish like Orioles!” provides an example of “slant rhyme” between “Opal Bales” and “Orioles.” ALMA MAHLER (1879–1964) Five Lieder (1910) (arranged by Cliff Colnot) The artistic setting of Alma Schindler’s youth— cultivated by her father, the famous landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler, and her mother, Anna von Bergen, a singer—shaped a charis- matic, gifted young musician. Alma studied piano and, later, composition and counter- point with the Viennese pianist, organist, and composer Josef Labor, whose students includ- ed Arnold Schoenberg. She developed a close relationship with her father, spending endless hours in his studio, and was devastated by his sudden death on August 9, 1892. Anna had by that time begun an affair with one of Emil’s students, Carl Moll, whom she married in 1895. Thus, Alma learned early about amorous adventure and deceit. During a trip to Italy in April 1899, she had a brief romance with artist Gustav Klimt, but that relationship ended in betrayal. Music provid- ed a salve for Alma’s wounded spirit. “Music, my hope, my strength, don’t abandon me, as the others have abandoned me,” read her dia- ry entry on September 9, 1899. She resumed compositional studies in the fall of 1900 with 20-year-old Alexander Zemlinsky, the teach- er and soon-to-be brother-in-law of Schoen- berg. Despite her constant condemnations of his ugliness, Alma and Alexander slowly fell in love. She described the pattern of their composition lessons in another diary entry on October 18, 1901: “We worked—kissed— worked again—kissed again—and so on.” Alma produced many of her first piano pieces and Lieder for voice and piano, reportedly more than 100 in number although only 14 have survived, under Zemlinsky’s guidance. Their relationship was replaced by Alma’s infatuation with another Viennese musician, the conductor and composer Gustav Mahler, whom she met at a dinner party thrown by her friends Emil and Berta Zuckerkandl on November 7, 1901. A torrid romance followed. Alma and Gustav publicly announced their engagement on December 23 and married on March 9, 1902. Before formalizing their commitment, Mahler needed to clarify their professional relationship. “How do you pic- ture the married life of a husband and wife who are both composers?” His correspon- dence continued: “The role of ‘composer,’ the ‘bread-winner,’ is mine; yours is that of the loving partner, the sympathetic comrade.” Immediately taken aback by her fiancé’s con- dition, Alma grew to accept the arrangement, writing in her diary on December 24: “I would give everything for him—my music— everything —so powerful is my longing!” Alma’s 14 surviving songs reveal a composer of enormous talent and potential. Her earliest collection, the Fünf Lieder , date from around 1900–1. The text selections demonstrated Alma’s complete familiarity with the preem- inent lyrical poets of the day: Richard Deh- mel, Otto Erich Hartleben, Gustav Falke, and Rainer Maria Rilke, along with one poem by the Romanic author Heinrich Heine. These finely crafted essays in late-Romantic vocal Alma Mahler (1909) RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 49