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To launch
our summer series of podcasts, I thought I’d provide a “musical passport”
montage, something we haven’t done much of in the past couple of summers. In
past years, we’ve provided travelogue-style podcasts that explore specific
countries and regions, often not by native composers.
Today’s
theme has to do with “going South”. South can be both a relative and an
absoluter term. To illustrate, in one of his solo albums, Québec singer-song
writer Michel Rivard talks of the South in this way (my translation) – At
the pub, they sing farewell to Johnny, who’s headed South. South of
Shefferville isn’t Jamaica, it’s Québec CIty, or Matane, or New Brunswick.
It’s in
that vein that we should consider our first track, the concert overture In
the South by Edward Elgar. Subtitled “Alassio” for the Italian
Riviera town where Elgar and his family stayed in the winter of 1903 to 1904,
it paints a picture of Elgar strolling around during the visit, while the
buildings, landscape and history of the town provided him with sources of
inspiration. In his words, “Then in a flash, it all came to me – the conflict
of the armies on that very spot long ago, where I now stood – the contrast of
the ruin and the shepherd – and then, all of a sudden, I came back to reality.
In that time I had composed the overture – the rest was merely writing it
down.”
We turn
later in the montage to another British composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams,
and his seventh symphony subtitled “Sinfonia antartica”. The symphony revisits
the music Vaughan Williams provided for the film Scott of the Antarctic
in 1947.
The
symphony is in five movements; the composer specified that the third movement
lead directly into the fourth. The score includes a brief literary quotation at
the start of each movement. They are sometimes declaimed in performance,
although the composer did not say that they were intended to form part of a
performance of the work. The quotes are:
- To suffer
woes which hope thinks infinite,/ To forgive wrongs darker than death or
night,/ To defy power which seems omnipotent,/ ... / Neither to change, nor
falter, nor repent:/ This ... is to be/ Good, great and joyous, beautiful and
free,/ This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory. (Shelley, Prometheus
Unbound)
- There go
the ships, and there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to take his pastime
therein. (Psalm 104, Verse 26)
- Ye ice
falls! Ye that from the mountain's brow/ Adown enormous ravines slope amain —/
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,/ And stopped at once amid their
maddest plunge!/ Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts! (Coleridge, Hymn
before Sunrise, in the vale of Chamouni)
- Love, all
alike, no season knows, nor clime,/ Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags
of time. (Donne, The Sun Rising))
- I do not
regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out
against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint. (Scott's Last Journal)
The only
work on today’s montage emanating from a Southern composer is by Argentina’s
King of the Tango. Written between 1965 and 1970, the Cuatro Estaciones
Porteñas, are a set of four tango compositions written by Ástor
Piazzolla, which were originally conceived and treated as different
compositions rather than one suite. By giving the adjective porteño, referring
to those born in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital city, Piazzolla gives an
impression of the four seasons in Buenos Aires. Note the order of the seasons
doesn’t match the “Northern” order of Vivaldi’s concerti!
The pieces
were scored for his quintet of violin (viola), piano, electric guitar, double
bass and bandoneón. The version I chose is an arrangement for piano trio.
I think you will love this music too
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