Flights to Eternity Programme Notes
With pieces inspired by the raven, the lark and the phoenix,
each of these works send us beyond our earthbound journeys while
music alluding to death and the afterlife takes us into the eternal realm.
In some ways, Franz Schubert could be considered the 'patron saint'
(the name Rosamunde comes from one of his string quartets),
yet the famous and powerful D minor string quartet subtitled
“Death and the Maiden” has yet to be performed at the Festival.
Time for that to change while on our collective flight to eternity at Rosamunde 2024, enjoy!
~ Death and the Maiden ~
Thursday August 22nd 7 PM
Tonight's program requires far fewer explanations than the first concert on our series!
Ysaÿe's second sonata begins with a quote from Bach's Partita No. 3 Preludio and was dedicated to the violinist
Jacques Thibaud. Thibaud and Ysaÿe were such good friends that the violinist-composer even lent his
Guarnerius and Stradivarious violins to Thibaud! As well as quotations from Bach,
Ysaÿe also uses the "Dies Irae" theme from the Catholic Mass for the Dead.
Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending and Schubert's Death and the Maiden quartet
are truly divine works that transport one beyond the earthly realm.
Thank you for attending the 2024 Rosamunde Festval!
~ The Raven & the Phoenix ~
Tuesday August 20, 7 p.m.
Carmen Braden The Raven Conspiracy (2013)
Elation Pauls Biography ~ Chris Anstey Biography ~ Jennifer Thiessen Biography ~ Leanne Zacharias Biography
Carmen Braden Biography
A group of ravens is called a ‘conspiracy’ – a fitting name for these intelligent, beautiful and sonically fascinating beings. Ravens hold huge mystery and fascination for me. In The Raven Conspiracy for string quartet, I explore themes sourced from ravens, each of which became a movement of the piece.
Sticks and Bones is a musical form of a creation myth – where did the ravens come from? A nest, deep in the earth made of sticks and bones, and as the ravens cracked out of their shells and clawed their way to the surface their feathers were singed and burned to a shiny black.
Waltz of wing and claw reflects the ravens’ aerial dance when they swoop and dive, rise and hang suspended, all in a mesmerizing shaded synchronicity.
Something Shiny is a movement that evokes the ravens’ playfulness, mischief, jaunty stride and jangling song.
The Raven Conspiracy was written for the Penderecki Quartet, and was supported by the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre’s Mentorship Program. The Penderecki Quartet premiered the work during their NWT tour in September 2013. Thanks to the Quartet, to NACC and also to Canadian North for allowing me to attend the premiere.
- Carmen Braden, Composer
Maurice Ravel Sonata for Violin and Cello M. 73
Annalee Patipatanakoon Biography ~ Roman Borys Biography
Though he was something of a prodigy and hard-working, Maurice Ravel found his experience of the Paris Conservatoire and the official Parisian musical world frustrating. Having failed to win any prizes as a pianist, he left the Conservatoire in 1895, only to return two years later to study composition with Fauré. In the first years of the 20th century, Ravel made five efforts to win the Prix de Rome. His elimination in the first round of the 1905 competition caused a scandal, when the chosen finalists all turned out to be students of one professor, who was on the jury.
But by that time Ravel did not really need that acknowledgment of conventional success. He had already begun to gather critical attention for works such as his String Quartet and Jeux d’eau for piano, and had become part of a loose circle of Parisian artists and intellectuals who thought of themselves as Les Apaches, as outsiders. Although he continued to refuse most French honors, Ravel nonetheless became a central figure in French arts, and after the death of Debussy in 1918 Ravel was considered the leading French composer.
So it was natural that he was asked to contribute to a special Debussy commemorative supplement for La Revue musicale. Appearing in December 1920, that supplement included what would become the first movement of the Sonata for Violin and Cello (as well as contributions from Bartók, Dukas, Falla, Roussel, Satie, and Stravinsky, among others). Ravel had begun this movement in April 1920, and would need almost two years to complete the four movements of the Sonata. “In my own work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation, in general, necessary,” Ravel wrote later. “During this interval I come gradually to see, and with growing precision, the form and evolution which the subsequent work should have as a whole.”
This lean, ruthlessly linear Sonata, dedicated to the memory of Debussy, picks up some of the esthetic cast and economy of means of Debussy’s late work. “The music is stripped to the bone,” Ravel wrote. “Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody.”
Ravel uses elements of cyclical thematic transformation to unify the work. The opening violin figuration, with its major/ minor mode interaction, returns later in other movements, as does the angularly leaping second theme in the cello. The major/minor duality is again present in the second movement, a scherzo also driven by the contrast between bowed and plucked sonority. Ravel apparently knew Kodály’s 1914 Duo for violin and cello (and at its premiere in April 1922, Ravel’s Sonata was also labeled Duo) and there are clear intimations of Kodály and Bartók and Hungarian folk music in the pungent dissonances and virtuosic verve of Ravel’s music. Its tunes, as in the chorale of the slow movement, are usually modal. The austere chorale wraps around a core of contrasting fury, distilled in part from that second theme in the opening movement.
The athletic, multifarious finale is shaped by tonal centers on C and F-sharp, and that relationship of an augmented fourth is reflected in some of the themes, particularly those with a Hungarian flavor. At the close of this strenuously polyphonic piece, Ravel combines several of the Sonata’s themes into a zesty contrapuntal climax.
— Ravel Programme Note by L.A. Phil writer John Henken
~ Intermission ~
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber Passacaglia in G Minor (no. 16) for solo violin from the Mystery (Rosary) Sonatas
Karl Stobbe Biography
Karl Stobbe provides more information on this work and others at 8:30 here:
Classic 107 interview
Jon Leifs Quartetto I. Op. 21 Mors et vita
It is very likely that the Icelandic composer Jón Leifs’ chamber music has never been performed in Manitoba. His poignantly sorrowful Quartetto I, Op. 21 Mors et vita (death and life) was written in Germany in 1939 during the first three months of the war, prior to fleeing to Sweden with his Jewish wife and their two daughters. The piece evokes the epic glaciers of his home country while hinting at twelve-tone techniques employed by the Second Viennese School.
Kelly-Marie Murphy Give me Phoenix Wings to Fly (1997)
Annalee Patipatanakoon Biography ~ Roman Borys Biography ~ Paul Williamson Biography
Give Me Phoenix Wings to Fly was commissioned by the Gryphon Trio and made possible through a grant from the Laidlaw Foundation. It was written between March and September of 1997 for the Debut Atlantic concert series.
In addition to the myth of the Phoenix, there are two poetic influences for this piece.
The first is John Keats:
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
The second is Robert Graves:
To bring the dead to life
Is no great magic.
Few are wholly dead:
Blow on a dead man’s embers
And a live flame will start.
I’ve always been intrigued by the myth of the Phoenix – a bird that immolates in fire and then rises up again from its own ashes. It is such a powerful image, and one which is relevant to contemporary life, as we find ourselves balanced somewhat precariously on the brink of disaster. No matter how devastating any single event might be, you can still recover and begin again: a do-over. The success is in the attempt and the belief that it is possible to move forward.
I structured the piece in 3 movements to cover each phase of the event; fire, bleak devastation, and rebuilding. The first movement is very fast with quick patterns swirling between the 3 instruments. It ends very loudly on the lowest note of the piano and goes without break into the second movement.
The second movement is very austere, open, and soloistic, written without metre. I wanted to evoke the image of a few embers floating into the still air, glowing briefly then dying.
The third movement is about rebuilding. The elements of self that survived the devastation, struggle to find one another and emerge from the ashes stronger than before.
- Kelly-Marie Murphy, Composer
