Concert & Tickets
Max at 75
- Knussen
Programme note
Oliver Knussen (b.1952)
Music for a Puppet Court, puzzle pieces for two chamber orchestras (1983)
Puzzle 1 (“Iste tenor ascendit”)
Toyshop Music (after “Tris”)
Antiphon (after “iste tenor ascendit”)
Intrada and Puzzle 2 (“Tris”)
In 1972 I arranged two puzzle-canons, attributed to the sixteenth century English composer John Lloyd, for a small ensemble, and the following year added two short variations of my own. Music for a Puppet Court, completed in August 1983, is a recomposition and expansion of this material, scored for two antiphonally placed chamber orchestras.
The Lloyd puzzle-canons were found in a court songbook dating from the early years of Henry VIII’s reign. The canti firmi (tenors) are not notated except for crossword-like clues – in one case, for example, the Greek word tris (thrice) followed by four descending notes. The missing cantus was found to consist of these four notes played 3 x 3 times in steadily accelerating note-lengths, from breves to quavers. The solutions were found and published in 1951 by John E. Stevens.
The title Music for a Puppet Court is partly a reference to the historical origin of the puzzle-canons, and partly to the fanciful nature of the present instrumental settings. Orchestra 1 (left) centres around a celesta, a guitar, and 2 flutes; Orchestra 2 (right) around a harp and 2 clarinets. Each orchestra contains an assortment of winds, percussion and strings which sustain, amplify or echo music played by the “nucleii”.
© Oliver Knussen, 1983 - Mahler
Programme note
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Five Songs to words by Friedrich Rückert (1901-02)Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Um Mitternacht [arr D. Matthews]
Liebst du um Schönheit [arr D. Matthews]
“It is I myself,” said Mahler of Rückert’s poem, Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen. In Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) he had found a profoundly, even uncannily kindred spirit – one whose loss of his children, commemorated in his Kindertotenlieder, so sadly foreshadowed a similar tragedy in the Mahler household a few years after the composer had completed his setting of a selection of those same Kindertotenlieder in 1904. With one exception, the present five Rückert songs were written in a sustained surge of inspiration in the summer of 1901.According to someone who knew the composer well, Rückert’s Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder “is so typical of Mahler that he might have written it himself.” The orchestral material derives from the sound of the bees which, in the poem, are introduced in the second stanza but which, in the song, buzz industriously throughout.
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft describes, in Mahler’s words, “the way one feels in the presence of a beloved being of whom one is completely sure without a single word needing to be spoken.” Cellos and basses are excluded from a texture in which evocative woodwind melody floats fragrantly on the air.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen was inspired, Mahler said, by “the feeling that fills one and rises to the tip of one’s tongue but goes no further.” It is a feeling which Mahler explored further in the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony, with much the same melodic material and similarly nostalgic harp colouring.
Um Mitternacht is something of an anomaly in this collection, partly because of the religious sentiment expressed with so much fervour at the end but also because of Mahler’s scoring: it not only excludes the strings but also includes low wind instruments (trombones, tuba and double bassoon) which have no part to play in the other songs. In today’s performance it will be heard in an arrangement by composer and Mahler expert David Matthews.
Liebst du um Schönheit was written a year later than the others and in a different situation. A comparatively simple love song, it was intended as a surprise for the composer’s wife, Alma Schindler, whom he had married five months earlier. It was presumably because of its essentially intimate nature that Mahler never orchestrated it. The version of Liebst du um Schönheit to be performed on this occasion has also been arranged by David Matthews.
© Gerald Larner
Five Rückertlieder (words by Friedrich Rückert)
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
Im Zimmer stand
Ein Zweig der Linde,
Ein Angebinde
Von lieber Hand.
Wie lieblich war der Lindenduft!
Wie lieblich ist der Lindenduft!
Das Lindenreis
Brachst du gelinde!
Ich atme leis
Im Duft der Linde
Der Liebe linden Duft.
I breathed a gentle fragrance!
In the room stood
A branch of lime,
A present
From a dear hand.
How lovely was the fragrance of lime!
How lovely is the fragrance of lime!
The lime-twig
Was gently plucked by you.
I softly breathe,
In the fragrance of lime,
Love’s gentle fragrance.
Liebst du um Schönheit
Liebst du um Schönheit, o nicht mich liebe!
Liebst die Sonne, sie trägt ein goldnes Haar!
Liebst du um Jugend, o nicht mich liebe!
Liebe den Frühling, der jung ist jedes Jahr!
Liebst du um Schätze, o nicht mich leibe!
Liebe die Meerfrau, sie hat viel Perlen klar!
Liebst du um Liebe, o ja, mich liebe!
Liebe mich immer, dich lieb’ ich immerdar.
If you love beauty’s sake, do not love me;
Love the sun, it wears hair of gold.
If you love for youth’s sake, do not love me;
Love the spring, which is young every year.
If you love for treasure’s sake, do not love me;
Love the mermaid, who owns many lucent pearls.
If you love for love’s sake, yes, then love me;
Love me always, as I love you always forever.
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!
Meine Augen schlag’ ich neider,
Wie ertappt auf böser Tat.
Selber darf ich nicht getrauen,
Ihrem Wachsen zuzuschauen.
Deine Neugier ist Verrat!
Bienen, wenn sie Zellen bauen,
Lassen auch nicht zu sich schauen,
Schauen selbst auch nicht zu.
Wenn die reichen Honigwaben
Sie zu Tag gefördert haben,
Dann vor allen nasche du!
Do not eavesdrop on my songs.
I cast my eyes down
As if caught in a misdeed.
I cannot even trust myself
To watch them grow.
You inquisitiveness is treason!
Bees, when they build cells,
Do not let one observe them either,
And do not observe themseves.
When the rich honeycombes
Have been brought to the daylight
Then, before anybody, you shall taste them.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben.
Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!
Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.
Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,
Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet!
Ich leb’ allein in meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!
I have lost track of the world
With which I used to waste so much time;
It has heard nothing of me for so long,
It may well think I am dead.
And for me it is of no concern at all
If it treats me as dead.
Nor can I say anything at all against it,
For in truth I am dead to the world.
I am dead to the hurly-burly of the world
And repose in a place of quietness!
I live alone in my heaven
In my loving, in my song.
Um Mitternacht
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich gewacht
Und aufgeblickt zum Himmel;
Kein Stern vom Sterngewimmel
Hat mir gelacht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
hab’ ich gedacht
Hinaus in dunkle Schranken.
Es hat kein Lichtgedanken
Mir Trost gebracht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Die Schläge meines Herzens;
Ein einz’ger Puls des Schmerzes
War angefacht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Kämpft’ ich die Schlacht,
Nicht konnt’ ich sie entscheiden
Mit meiner Macht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich die Macht
In deine Hand gegeben!
Du hälst die Wacht
Um Mitternacht!
At midnight
I awoke
Not a star in the galaxy
Smiled at me
At midnight.
At midnight
My thought went
Out to the limits of darkness.
To bring me comfort
At midnight.
At midnight
I paid heed
To the beating of my heart.
One single pulse of pain
Caught fire
At midnight.
At midnight
I fought the fight
Of your sorrows, humanity.
I could not decide it
For all my power
At midnight.
At midnight
I gave my power
Into your hands,
Lord! Over life and death
You keep guard
At midnight. - Maxwell Davies
Programme note
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (b.1934)
Symphony No 4 (1993)
This symphony is different from its predecessors in that it is very much composed with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in mind, as opposed to a full-strength symphony orchestra. I chose to call it a symphony, as opposed to a chamber symphony or sinfonietta, because the musical thought and process are, I hope, no less ‘symphonic’ than in my other symphonies: indeed, I trust they are more concentrated, and leaner, the art concealing the art, but no less intense.
The work has two prime sources of inspiration, one purely musical, and one not. The musical spur came from a plainsong Adoma thalamum tuum, Sion (daughter of Sion, adom your bridal chamber) in a manuscript source slightly different, and I think more beautiful than that given in the standard Liber Usualis text. It was sung during a solemn procession, at the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, in which all carried lighted candles, after the deacon pronounced the words “Procedeamus in pace” (Let us set forth in peace). The text is an odd one, and this, together with the additional musical interest of the manuscript variant, and the significance of the candlelit procession, fascinated me enough to set it working like a yeast in my imagination, combining with itself in different ways, and resolving into different but related ‘sets’ of seven, nine and ten notes.
These groups of notes latched themselves onto and wove a musical fabric around the second prime source of inspiration – I came out of the house one morning, very early, to be confronted by a golden eagle a few yards from the door, perched on the fence. He took off, slowly unfolding a huge wing-span, floating upwards with an overwhelming grace-in-strength – the while regarding me with icy disdain – and moved slowly out to sea, against the rising sun. This vision has haunted me since, and although the music does not attempt to portray the flight literally, I hope something of the reverberations of that extraordinary moment come through. (I became intrigued by the flight of seabirds particularly, which interest found expression in ways of floating, spiralling, plunging in my recent oboe and cello concertos).
The processes to which I subjected my plainsong/eagle derived sets, including magic-square building and systematic transformations of interval and contour, took a few weeks to work through, absorb and become assimilated enough to carry around in my head as a background matrix – then the composition process proper could start, as the raw material and its associations became an almost (personal) mythological base, with and against which to work. I have no names for the sometimes elaborate, sometimes simple forms, nor for the working processes, which, however, I do recognise cannot help but refer back to the classical procedures, no matter how deeply these are now working below the surface. Increasingly, I have used a process or form incompletely, leaving a completion implicit (to the ideal ear!) or perhaps taken up and completed elsewhere in the work, or to be resumed in another piece – all this stimulated in particular by studying and conducting Mozart’s last three symphonies, analysing Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, and also watching the dramatic distortions of everyday measured space through conflicting spiral, vortex, circle, flows of directional energy informing whatever object Van Gogh painted, leading to ever more intriguing confrontations and tensions.
There are four movements, which play without a break – 1) moderately quick 2) very quick, a scherzo 3) slow and 4) after a slow introduction, quick.
The use of tonality/modality is perhaps of interest – it is, I feel of great help in defining for the ear formal settings-forth and returns, but no matter how ‘functional’ it sounds in this way, in the classical sense, it is an outcropping of a more fundamental process involving the plainsong in long-term transformations: the relationship between known, recognisable ‘object’ and ‘process’ in late Van Gogh is perhaps a helpful analogy.
The symphony, commissioned by Christian Salvesen for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, is dedicated to the memory of John Tunnell, late leader of the SCO, to whom I owe an infinite debt of gratitude as he was not only tolerant, three years ago, of my first efforts to conduct the classics with his orchestra, but positively encouraging, and full of constructive ideas.
© Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
- conductor
- mezzo-soprano
No composer has enjoyed a longer and more fruitful relationship with the SCO than Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – ‘Max’. He conducted the Orchestra in the premiere of his Fourth Symphony at the BBC Proms 20 years ago; Knussen was in the audience and recognised it immediately as a masterpiece. As a 75th birthday celebration, Knussen directs it here alongside his own brilliant miniatures and Mahler’s heart-stopping Rückert songs.
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