Beckett Chamber Music Series 2018 Programme

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'Instrumentalising Folk Song' explores the fundamental tools of communication — language and tonality — and uses these tools to examine ideas on cultural identity. Tonality is to a large extent the musical expression of language, its patterns, structures and rules are distinctive even to those who are not familiar with a particular tonal language itself. Folk song is perhaps this expression in its most natural form. On the subject, Béla Bartók writes, peasant music is the outcome of changes wrought by a natural force whose operation is unconscious; it is impulsively created by a community of men who have had no schooling; it is as much a natural product as are the various forms of animal and vegetable life.... the single tunes — are so many examples of high artistic perfection. In their small way, they are as perfect as the grandest masterpieces of musical art. They are, indeed, classical models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed... in the very best possible way, in the briefest possible form and with the simplest of means. Frank Martin's fusion of a French language impressionistic tonality with the Irishness of folk song disorientates how we hear even the simple interval of the perfect fifth. Are the open string chords in the violin the earthy drones of an Irish folk fiddle or are they impressionistic Debussian open chords, giving a feeling of an ambiguous tonal centre? Paradoxically, it seems both at once. With a further shade of complexity, the trio even offers hints of Martin's growing interest in twelve-tone music, with the series of sevenths at the end of the slow movement providing a link to 'Schoenberg and Poetry'. John Larchet's arrangements place traditional Irish Airs in an overtly romantic and formalised classical setting, while Sebastian Adams takes the letters of a folk song in Irish language as its subject matter, but by translating the letters into pitches he extracts totally unintended meaning from the text. The three works inextricably fuse the subject matter of Irish folk song and Irishness with each composers distinct personal identity. Beckett's unusual relationship with language was an important influence in choosing this programme: his choice of writing English or French and his self translation between the two, often writing in the "foreign" French and translating back into his "native" English. In contrast to Joyce, Beckett's Irishness is often overlooked, yet in combination with his Frenchness, his Irish identity is a distinctive and fundamental part of his work. Sarah Sew 1. Cáit Ní Dhuibhir 2. Ríl Na Gaillimhe (A Galway Reel) 3. Suantraidhe (Cradle Song) 4, Slip Jig: Cuaird Na gCarraig (The Sail Round the Rocks) — Ná Fág Mé Im' Aonar (Don't Leave Me Alone) 5. Caoine (Lament) 6. Hornpipe: Cornphíopa Dhún Laoghaire (The Dunleary Hornpipe) — Cornphíopa Fhear na Hataí (The Hatter's Hornpipe) 1. Emer's Farewell 2. Reel: The Wind that Shakes the Barley — The Flower of Donnybrook 3. The Wheelwright 4. Reel: The New Potatoes — The Merry Blacksmith 5. Little Brother of My Heart 6. Hornpipe: The Harvest Home — The Good-Natured Man The spirit of Irish traditional music is one of great depth and soul, but its characteristics are often remarkably different to those found in Western Art Music. As a result, the assimilation of both in a single work is rarely heard. Born in Ireland, John Francis Larchet was Director of Music at the Abbey Theatre from 1907 to 1934. Larchet worked with many of Ireland's leading literary figures, and he was an influential teaching figure as professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His Irish Airs transform the fiddle idiom into a more ‘classical’ violin-piano duet, with subtle harmonic and textural additions in both parts that create more nuanced and sophisticated structures than how they might have been performed in a traditional setting. Typical forms — such as reels, hornpipes, and laments – are included. Reels and hornpipes are traditionally danced to, which reflects their upbeat and lively character. Jigs are also used as dance material in folk music, but Larchet does not include any in the set; by contrast, Frank Martin uses this form as the basis for his finale in his Trio sur des melodies populaires irlandaises, the final piece in this programme. Many of the Irish Airs are structured in the way the dances are performed in traditional music. In a typical session, players would combine tunes to form ‘sets,’ where two or more melodies from closely related keys are played sequentially, without pause, one after the other. This provides a quick and discernible shift in the music because of the sharp tonal and rhythmic change between the tunes. Larchet also uses the Irish language to title the pieces in one of the sets — Cáit Ní Dhuibhir is the name of the first of these and is the only one without a translation; the title means Kitty O’Dwyer in English. It comes from a song that is traditionally sung in Irish, verse one of which includes the following translated excerpt: “The cuckoo, blackbird, and thrush were singing, and every note true/And the beginning and end of every verse was, ‘Ireland will one day belong to Kitty O’Dwyer.’” The story is allegorical; Kitty O’Dwyer is a metaphor for the Irish people. Jonathan Morris
Most of my output is pure music, guided neither by an outside narrative nor by a structural mould made from external input. 2018.1 is a massive departure from this norm. It uses four distinct types of material, which are presented in consecutive order repeatedly throughout the entire piece. All four material types are derived from stage directions from the opening page of Beckett’s Happy Days. The words of an Irish folk song were used to create a long series of notes which formed a grid on which the whole piece sits. Every event in the piece was developed from a note taken from this grid, and each of these events occurs at the rhythmic position of the note from the note row. The folk song includes a chorus which repeats the title three times, and when converted to pitches it forms a distinctive oscillating pattern which can be heard in many places and which also forms the crux of the work’s harmonic trajectory. The entire song contains 612 letters (or notes), and the repeated motif in the chorus lasts 21 notes, and the harmonic shape of the first act of the piece tapers gradually from sections 612 notes long to one lasting only the length of the chorus. When I applied my usual (quite instinct-based) compositional approach to the confines described by these structures, I realised the piece required an extreme number of ideas. It uses over 80 distinct musical ideas – at least 20 times as many as are necessary for a good piece of this length! Balancing the multitude of ideas so that the piece worked became a huge challenge, but the result is the exciting impression (in my view, anyway) of a spinning onslaught of thoughts, organised by some kind of internal logic but only on the very edge of control. The piece is divided into two acts, like Beckett’s plays Happy Days and Waiting for Godot, which I was reading as I started writing it (spurred by the commission for the Beckett Series). The second act of Happy Days is disproportionately shorter than the first, and the lengths of the two acts of 2018.1 are similarly balanced, which is as unusual in music as it is in theatre. In Godot, the second act essentially presents the same sequence of events as the first; the second act of 2018.1 is merely a telescoped, barren rereading of the first. From Happy Days again, the fact that the second act is bleaker (emphasised by Winnie sinking even further into the ground when the act opens) led me to the idea that my second act should take the most fragmentary moments of the first as its starting point and disintegrate them even further. Sebastian Adams "Points to consider from the work of Samuel Beckett: – Beckett’s work explores the limitations of language and words, finding influences in the visual arts, particularly Abstract Expressionism; and music, particularly Beethoven and Schubert in addition to collaborations with Morton Feldman (in the ‘opera’, Neither and radio play, Words and Music) and Marcel Mihalovici (in the radio play, Cascando). – Beckett’s use of the fragmentation of language, repetition and silence in his work. – Beckett’s choice of language and the self-translation of his work. Beckett wrote in both English and French, later translating the French works into English and some of the English works into French. The implications of this on Beckett’s relationship with words and language." Extract from the composition brief given to Sebastian Adams on 4 March 2018 by Beckett Chamber Music Series Although Frank Martin never lived in Ireland, he was commissioned to write a piano trio based on Irish folk melodies. However, after hearing an early draft of the score, the commissioner found N O M A Dlittle I C | that 2 4 was recognisably Irish in the new work and withdrew the commission. Following this setback, Martin studied collections of Irish folksongs at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and included a number of authentic traditional Irish melodies in his new composition. His portrayal of Irish music is remarkably accurate, but the merging of this with his own distinct compositional style is an even more noteworthy accomplishment. The result is a three-movement work of significant breadth, depth, and intricacy. Dissonant harmonies are frequently combined with more traditional sonorities like open fifths, while traditional tunes are often presented over complex polyrhythms. Constant changes of tempo reflect the juxtaposition of tunes in a traditional Irish instrumental set; meanwhile, the dance-like quality that is central to Irish traditional music pervades throughout, resulting in an energetic and spirited encapsulation and modernisation of Ireland’s native music that it suitable for the concert hall. Jonathan Morris
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Beckett Chamber Music Series 2018 Programme

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