In anticipation of his recital this weekend, first-year DMA candidate, Jack Reeder shares some thoughts on his chosen repertoire and finding meaning in music.
It is slightly unusual that two settings of the same text should appear on a program, let alone several of these pairings. My recital seeks to directly compare two settings of multiple poems by the great Victorian Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I first discovered Benjamin Britten’s A.M.D.G. at the suggestion of my dear friend and colleague, Andrew Major. Upon an initial listen to the work, I was struck with its remarkable brevity; Britten sets seven of Manley Hopkins’ poems, with the average setting lasting two minutes. Even more curious is the substantial complexity with which Britten was composing: the tessitura of each vocal part is rather dramatic, wide in range, and with very quick transitions from register to register. Most curious, however, was Britten’s own interaction with his work. It was composed in the summer of 1939, following the arrival of Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, in New York State. After a passionate and productive creative period of a mere 25 days, Britten seems to have largely abandoned the work; he pulled it from his catalogue, and reassigned its opus number to his operetta, Paul Bunyan. Britten never heard these works performed nor saw them edited and typeset in his lifetime.
In researching Hopkins’ poetry, I came across two similar settings by Samuel Barber—God’s Grandeur and Heaven-Haven (A Nun Takes the Veil). My interest was piqued. In researching each of these pieces, I found that Barber never gave God’s Grandeur (1938) an opus number, as he considered it juvenilia. (It is worth noting, of course that his iconic Adagio for Strings was completed in the same year, 1938.) Barber’s setting of Hopkins’ “Heaven-Haven” was initially published in 1937 as part of Four Songs, Opus 13, for solo voice and piano. The choral arrangement I selected was arranged by Barber and later published (and retitled) as Heaven-Haven (A Nun Takes the Veil) in 1961.
I felt that I was on the uphill climb of an extensive research project: two significant and brilliant 20th century composers set the same poems and pulled these works from their catalogues. Surely, there are issues with each piece; one can hear the brilliant composer practicing their craft in ways that are nearly successful. The same motives and harmonic shifts in Barber’s God’s Grandeur achieve true success in his just slightly later composition, Reincarnations, Op. 16 (1939-40). Similarly, melodic gestures and harmonic colors found in Britten’s A.M.D.G. can be heard in his masterful choral-orchestral War Requiem Op. 66 (1961-62). However, there are moments of immense textual clarity and beauty in each of these earlier settings: Barber’s depiction of the glorious and eternal morning of the Resurrection is expressed through pseudo-Venetian polychoral textures in God’s Grandeur and Britten’s explosive moment of C major, expressing the awe-inspiring moment of witnessing the holiness of God in Prayer II.
Why, then, did each composer set and subsequently regret setting this iconic poet? Surely, both composers were early in their careers, and used these works to develop their choral styles. Both composers also were exceptionally well read, and no doubt felt a draw to Hopkins’ fiercely romantic and vivid poetry. It’s hard not to be emotionally affected by the fervent Hopkins. His writing, although deeply Catholic in nature, speaks of a universal longing for an honest world. Throughout this process, I have been drawn to Hopkins’ persistent desire for a more complete connection with simplicity, breaking from the tenuousness of humanity. For Hopkins, this desire was an expression for a greater relationship with God. In “Heaven-Haven,” he longs for the place “Where springs not fail…/where flies no sharp and sided hail/And few lilies blow.” As is common in his poetry, Hopkins uses the perfection of nature as a metaphor for the Divine.
Gerard Manley Hopkins, self portrait, “Reflected in a Lake”
I believe that Hopkins’ desire for honesty and simplicity in his relationship with God expresses something that we long for in our relationships with others: complete and utter openness. It is remarkably challenging to be completely open to others. Hopkins beautifully expresses this vulnerable love, without distraction or selfishness, in the second part of his poem “The Alchemist in the City”:
Let me be to Thee as the circling bird,
Or bat with tender and air-crisping wings
That shapes in half-light his departing rings,
From both of whom a changeless note is heard.
I have found my music in a common word,
trying each pleasurable throat that sings
And every praised sequence of sweet springs,
And now infallibly which I preferred.
The authentic cadence was discovered late
Which ends those only strains that I approve,
And other science all gone out of date
And minor sweetness scare made mention of:
I have found the dominant of my range and state –
Love, O my God, to call Thee Love and Love.
Both Barber and Britten felt the fervor and intense emotional devotion that Hopkins so beautifully expressed in his poetry. Regardless of their own, retrospective feelings towards these works, each captures moments of simultaneous serenity and longing that made up Hopkins’ world. These works represent two brilliant composers before they became the exceptional vocal writers in their later careers. Both composers had clear and passionate ideas on how to set “God’s Grandeur,” both choosing to emphasize the destructive influence of humanity on the natural world around them, as declared by Hopkins: “And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil/Is bare now. “
These composers, in an attempt to musically support Hopkins’ meaning, have displayed that they too are human, bound and yet encouraged by the curse of repetitive practice before perfection. These pieces, those juvenile, demonstrate great composers at work. It is my hope that in programming these pieces, this recital is both inspiring and educational, both elaborate and simple. Hopkins sought to live a life fulfilled within these juxtapositions.