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Martin presents five of Ariel’s monologues and takes obvious
pleasure in conveying every word and mood through his
music; from the warm sands of the islands to the depths of
the sea, Shakespeare’s ‘airy spirit’ dances, laughs, loses
his temper…
Only nine years separate the Four Madrigals from the Songs
of Ariel, but the inspiration is quite different here. Bohuslav
Martinu (1890-1959) wrote this piece just a few months
before his death. Drawing on folklore and traditional dances,
he combines words and their sounds with very lilting
rhythms, and favours the general atmosphere of each piece,
rather than choosing to use word-painting. Love and death
are the subjects of these four gems, which combine the
spirit of the Renaissance madrigal with an authentic folk
tradition.
ů
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) still continues to inspire many
composers. Within his production, which includes
masterpieces such as the ballet Daphnis et Chloé and the
famous Boléro, the Trois Chansons, composed in 1915, are
Ravel’s only contribution to the a cappella repertoire.
Writing the texts himself, he joined the tradition of the
French polyphonic chanson, a readily light and naive genre,
while nevertheless mixing it with strong personal feelings
about the horrors of war (especially in the middle piece,
Trois beaux oiseaux du paradis), employing his great skill in
the arts of harmony and transparent sound.
Debussy or Ravel, he turned away from old poetry and
towards that of his contemporaries Paul Éluard and
Guillaume Apollinaire. From the bells in Marie to the calm,
quiet harmonies of Belle et ressemblante, through all the
colours of sunshine, light and shadow, Poulenc transforms
and gives radiance to these surrealist poems, in which the
feel of the words matters perhaps more than their actual
meaning.
A German composer of the first half of the twentieth
century, Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was forced by the war
to spend a few years in exile in Switzerland from 1938,
before settling in the United States in 1940. He composed
his Six Chansons in 1939, to poems by another German
artist, also living in Switzerland, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-
1926). Taken from the collection entitled Vergers, these six
poems are devoted to the confrontation between the poet's
spirit and nature, in which he seeks answers. In writing
these poems, Rilke complied with the requirements and
sounds of a different language. Hindemith followed the
same path and thus produced a cycle that is in fact close to
the French tradition, though also showing signs of Germanic
culture. The result is a sober, contemplative and intense
work, depicting with refinement the mood of Rilke’s poems.
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), who composed almost a
hundred and fifty songs, is perhaps one of the twentiethcentury
French musicians best known to singers. He
composed his Sept Chansons in September 1936, but unlike