The Stories
When Composers Read
The Stories
When Composers Read
«When composers read poems, they listen both to the music of the words themselves, and to the music on the far side of the poems, the music that the poets themselves were attending to». In a 2004 lecture at Harvard University, the musicologist Daniel Albright eloquently reflected on the deep connections between literary and musical processes. In this article, we look at six moments in music history when words captured composers’ imagination and prompted a creative response. In doing so, we explore another aspect of the theme of «crossroads» which this issue of La Colonne is dedicated to…
A picky reader’s swan song
«Sound, music! Come, my queen, take hands with me / And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be». In William Shakespeare’s imagination, Oberon was quite the party animal! The King of Elves is one of the main characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s – though not necessarily the wisest… A trickster rather than a sage ruler, he is a source of both chaos and comic relief in the classic 1595 play. Not quite what Carl Maria von Weber was after when he set out to create an opera about this mythical figure in 1865, which is why he bypassed the Bard altogether and looked for other literary materials to find inspiration for his Oberon. This would eventually take him to the very origins of the fairy king, namely medieval European folklore.
Though the project was a commission, Weber appears to have been given much leeway by Charles Tremble, the director of the Covent Garden theatre, who deeply admired his work. The British dramatist James Robinson Planché promptly suggested to him a libretto drawing heavily from Huon of Bordeaux, a 13th-century chanson de geste in the style of the famous Song of Roland. Huon, a distinguished knight, is sent by his lord, King Oberon, on a mission to woo and wed the Caliph’s daughter in Baghdad in an attempt to prove that human beings are capable of radical love and faithfulness. A descendant of French Huguenot refugees, Planché likely found it quite natural to explore narrative sources in his mother tongue. Yet for all the librettist’s enthusiasm and the original story’s depth, Carl Maria von Weber was reportedly unimpressed, finding the text too wordy and the dialogues awkward. So, he drew up his sleeves, picked up his pen and reworked it himself, looking this time at literature written in his own language – German. Christoph Martin Wieland’s 1780 masterpiece, the epic poem Oberon, proved ideal. Though its plot hardly varied from Huon, the verses were infused with the values and morals of the Enlightenment so dear to Weber. At last, it «clicked», and both the 1826 London premiere and its later German-language adaptation were resounding successes.
But why, one might wonder, did the composer show himself to be so picky, perfectionist even, in this instance? After all, by the time Tremble reached out to him, his renown was already established internationally and he hardly needed to prove himself… The fact is, Weber knew his first English opera would also be his last composition. «I am going to London to die», he reportedly stated upon leaving Germany . Terminally ill with tuberculosis, he saw Oberon as his swan song, which is probably why he so anxiously wanted to get every note – and every word – absolutely right. We will have the privilege of hearing the overture of this musical farewell on 22.05., performed by the Luxembourg Philharmonic.
William Blake, Oberon and Titania (1795) Library of Congress
Colouring words with music
Gustav Mahler on the other hand was in his prime when he first encountered Friedrich Rückert’s poetry. Rückert (1788–1866) was a German wordsmith whose extensive literary output was set to music by generations of composers throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries – from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his sister Fanny to the Schumanns, including Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss. Around 1900, it became Gustav Mahler’s turn. By the time the last of the original five Rückert-Lieder was composed in the summer of 1902, he had turned 40, married Alma Schindler – one of Vienna’s most eligible socialites and a talented composer herself – and further consolidated his career as a conductor and composer. In other words, life had been rather kind. It is probably a mixed sense of thanksgiving, tranquil reminiscence and lingering uncertainty at what the future may hold that prompted him to engage with Rückert’s poems. For engage with them he did – Mahler did not simply set the verses to music, he occasionally went as far as to alter them so their rhythm, phrasing and sonorities may ideally match the score.
The American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, who recorded the Rückert-Lieder in 2016, says of this interplay: «With a good composer, the text and music goes hand in hand, and Mahler is wonderful at colouring the words with his music». Indeed, the relationship between Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Rückert (and between Mahler and poetry in general) did not stop there. Between 1901 and 1904, he went on to arrange another of the poet’s works, the heart-wrenching Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), displaying the same level of intimate involvement with the text’s structural details. His surviving correspondence with the baritone Johannes Meeschaert demonstrates this: «Just a single change in N° 4. of the Kindertotenlieder, is unfortunately not possible . . .», he writes ahead of a 1906 performance. «Since it is all due to the vowel ‹e›, I could suggest a text change, if you are happy with it? I see that in other places where the vowel ‹o› is sung on the same pitch, you have not expressed any doubts. If this does not work, I will think of another way out.»
Vivaldi’s sonnets: a case of ekphrasis?
Other composers went further than such readjustments, picking up their pens (or feathers) to actually write poetry themselves. Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Quattro Stagioni) consistently appear in various charts of the most famous classical tunes, and while this iconic masterpiece may have few musical secrets left for you to uncover, did you know that it is likely the «Red Priest» also composed a series of sonnets to accompany the score? Four to be precise – one for each season. As pointed out by the harpsichordist and early music specialist, Martin Pearlman, these texts appeared in the first published manuscript of the Seasons in 1725 and stand out within the broader context of Vivaldi’s oeuvre: «No other concertos by Vivaldi contain such detailed programmes», he writes. Here is an English-language, prose translation of «Spring» (La Primavera), which opens both the musical and the poetic sequence:
Spring – Concerto in E Major
Allegro Springtime is upon us. The birds celebrate her return with festive song, and murmuring streams are softly caressed by the breezes. Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven, Then they die away to silence, and the birds take up their charming songs once more. Largo On the flower-strewn meadow, with leafy branches rustling overhead, the goat-herd sleeps, his faithful dog beside him. Allegro Led by the festive sound of rustic bagpipes, nymphs and shepherds lightly dance beneath the brilliant canopy of spring.
Much like the concertos making up the different «seasons», each sonnet is structured in three parts, named after tempo markings. Pearlman further emphasises the intimate relationship between the score and the text: «Capital letters are placed next to lines in the sonnets, as well as in the score, to show us exactly where the effects mentioned in the poems are taking place in the music. In addition, captions over parts of the music – sometimes over individual instrumental lines – indicate pictorial effects even beyond those in the sonnets». Such interconnectedness begs the question: are we facing a case of authentic ekphrasis – meaning «a literary and rhetorical trope of summoning up through words an impression of a visual stimulus, object, or scene» (Oxford Classical Dictionary), in this case, music? Or are the Seasons themselves Vivaldi’s reverse ekphrastic response to the readily-written sonnets? While the question of which came out of the composer’s polymath mind first – the text or the score – is likely to remain unanswered, something is for certain: one doesn’t go without the other.
So, why not try the following on 11.05.: print out the poems and read them along as Janine Jansen and the Camerata Salzburg take on Antonio Vivaldi’s Quattro Stagioni – which are both one of the finest achievements of the Baroque era and a universal evocation of Nature’s changing beauty. No doubt this added literary dimension will renew your relationship to the Italian composer and cleric, who incidentally believed that «in every note, there is a story to be told».
Title page of Vivaldi's Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Invenzione which included The Four Seasons
Bite-sized wisdom, from Ancient Greece to today
Haiku have long been a fixture in many Western homes and bookstores, but the same can’t be said about hellenistic epigrams… Which is a shame, since these poetic forms share two key features with their widespread Japanese counterparts: they are short and ancient! «Originally inscribed on monuments or statues, they gradually evolved into a literary genre of their own», as University of Birmingham’s Gideon Nisbet notes. Sometimes solemn, sometimes downright witty, they kept the West entertained well beyond the eventual decline of Ancient Greece and have inspired composers as well.
Nikandre’s epigram, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford University
The late American modernist Elliott Carter was one of them. Completed in 2012, right as he was turning 103 (!), Epigrams was his last work and consists of twelve short vignettes for piano trio. While both the piece’s title and its format pay tribute to the afore-mentioned poetical practice, such a project should not be understood a one-off fantasy but rather, as the culmination of Carter’s lifelong commitment to literature in general, and to poetry in particular – a passion nurtured from his youth, since the two-time Pulitzer Prize for Music winner had read English at Harvard University before fully turning to composition. «Elliott Carter is a composer particularly gifted at listening to and listening through poetry», Daniel Albright noted in 2004. Ten years after Carter’s death, the music scholar John Link takes a similar view in his 2022 study, Elliott Carter’s Late Music, stressing how Carter’s imagination was literary in essence and on the pulse of his time: «He [illuminated] the most striking and original poetry of the 20th century». Towards the end of his life, it appears the scope of his literary preferences and inspiration sources expanded, as both the Epigrams and an unfinished project featuring works by the poetess Sappho (VII-VI BCE) showed him reaching well over 2000 years back. Such was Elliott Carter: insatiably curious and productive until the very end. As his friend the poet Lloyd Schwartz sums up in his obituary: «What's sad about his death isn't only that a whole era in music has come to an end, but that Carter was still composing, and on the highest level.» On 20.05., the Philharmonie gives you the opportunity to encounter this great mind’s final work in the intimate setting of the Salle de Musique de Chambre.
The poetess Sappho (detail from a Pompei mural, ca. AD 45)
The libretto that changed everything
The biblical story of the Hebrew people’s exile to Babylon under the reign of the cruel Nebuchadnezzar may be as old – if not older – as the Ancient Greek epigrams discussed earlier and it, too, provided substance for brilliant musical creation centuries later. Only, the composer in question needed a little bit more convincing than Elliott Carter, to say the least…
1838, 1839 and 1840 had been anni horribiles for young Giuseppe Verdi. His two children had died one after the other in infancy, followed by his dear wife Margherita, who had been his first love. As if this triple tragedy wasn’t enough, his latest commission for La Scala flopped completely, leading to the immediate cancellation of all remaining performances – a crushing low point in his nascent career. This did not mean however that the iconic opera house gave up on him. In fact, its manager Bartholomeo Merelli soon reached out to the composer – by then thoroughly depressed and defeated – with a new libretto called Nabucco. Decades later in his Autobiographical Sketch (1879), here is how Verdi remembers his first interaction with the text: «I went home and threw the libretto onto the table without even looking at it. In throwing it down, it opened of its own accord, and my eye fell on these words: ‹Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate.› I read those verses and then the next ones, and then the whole piece. I went on reading, one chorus after another, and from that moment I could not put the libretto down. I went to bed very late that night – and Nabucco was already half composed».
Might this retrospective account be slightly exaggerated and self-indulgent? Naturally. But the gist of it is certainly true: Encountering Nabucco’s libretto took Giuseppe Verdi out of the despair he had been living under, rekindling his appetite for life in general, and for musical creation in particular. As the Verdi scholar Julian Budden summarizes, «Nabucco was, essentially, the beginning of Verdi’s star career». No doubt the Luxembourg Philharmonic is eager to tackle this monumental turning point on 06., 08. & 10.05. at the Grand Théâtre.
Va, pensiero in the original print of the opera libretto for Nabucco by Temistocle Solera, Milan 1842
When Bible study leads to epiphanies
When one considers that the word Bible shares the same etymology as «library», the fact that the «Book of Books» has inspired so many musical projects throughout the centuries comes as no surprise. While many – like Verdi’s Nabucco – stem from a superficial engagement with biblical stories (through a retelling in the form of a libretto for instance), other composers have directly confronted themselves with the original. Few are as famous as Johann Sebastian Bach, for whom «the final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God». A devout Protestant, the Leipzig Cantor lived by Martin Luther’s injunction to read the Scriptures individually – a practice which, before the Reformation, had been strictly forbidden to lay Christians.
In 1934, a quasi-miraculous discovery revealed the extent of Bach’s bible study habits and their relevance for his music. While visiting the attic of his family’s historical home, an American pastor stumbled upon a copy of a 17th-century study Bible signed – and most importantly, annotated – by none other than the German composer. The margins were filled with hundreds of handwritten comments, some mere grammatical corrections, others showing signs of sudden artistic inspiration, such as the following note found around 1 Chronicles:
«This chapter is the true foundation of all God-pleasing church music.»
Exodus 15:20 appears to have triggered an even more detailed musical reaction:
«First prelude for two choirs to be sung to the glory of God.»
On 14.06. Sir John Eliot Gardiner invites you to discover seven cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach and other Lutheran baroque composers, all directly resulting from their personal, in-depth exposure to and contemplation of sacred texts. These works can be best described as intense biblical vignettes ranging from the Old Testament to the Book of Revelation: the Great Flood, Christ lying in the tomb, psalms of praise or sorrow… Culminating in Bach’s Actus Tragicus, which the musicologist Alfred Dürr described as belonging to «the highest literature of all time». No doubt he meant that both musically and literally, as this youth work encapsulates the Bible’s entire narrative arc, i.e. the full story of redemption, from the Fall of Man to the apocalyptic announcement of Christ’s Second Coming.
The fruitful interplay between words and music notes is one of the recurring themes that give the Philharmonie’s programme its originality and coherence. We hope you will be encouraged to explore it and to deepen your love of both literature and music this spring. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to browse our newest thematic book, Music and Text, to dive deeper into the topic.
Johann Sebastian Bach's annotated Bible with signature and date (1733)
