In Staunton, Virginia, we are doubly fortunate to have the American Shakespeare Center and the world’s only recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor theater, Blackfriars Playhouse. Having such resources so near to hand allows one to appreciate the breadth of Shakespeare’s accomplishment. The whole rich panoply of humanity parades across his stage. Plays depict vengeance and forgiveness, history and modernity; love in particular shows its face in everything from playful jesting (Much Ado About Nothing) to overwrought passion (Romeo and Juliet) to fatal jealousy (Othello). And a recurring element involves the crossover between reality and fantasy, between the natural and supernatural, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest. Shakespeare’s plays succeed because they embrace far more than one set of emotions. Every comedy is touched by turmoil, every brutal tragedy lights up on occasion with comic levity. Such depth and universality make the plays relevant across centuries. Small wonder, then, that generations of composers have drawn inspiration from Shakespeare’s material.

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) lived a very short life; his 36 years are akin to the brief span of Mozart’s existence on earth. But like Mozart, Purcell’s story, too, is one of prodigious accomplishments at an early age. Following training as a chorister in the Royal Chapel, Henry was appointed resident composer at age 17 and became head organist at Westminster Abbey just two years later. Appointments at court and chapel continued until his death and called forth a vast array of ceremonial odes, songs, and liturgical settings. But in his lifetime and ever since Purcell has been loved best for his dramatic scores: Dido and Aeneas (1689), King Arthur (1691), and The Fairy Queen (1692).

Tonight we hear various selections from The Fairy Queen, a piece adapted from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (and not at all related to Spenser’s epic poem The Fairie Queene). Purcell composed the music in 1692, perhaps in conjunction with a wedding anniversary for William and Mary. Neither full opera nor simply a stage play, The Fairy Queen qualifies as a semi-opera, a genre of theater piece that flourished for a mere 50 years before opera took stronger root in England. In semi-opera, spoken portions of the play are interrupted (usually after scenes involving the supernatural) with episodes of music and dancing. These include symphonies that launch each act of the play and interludes that provide levity or commentary on the action.

We begin with the rousing Overture to Act 1, set in D major to feature trumpets. That tonality continues over into the grand chorus “Hail! Great Parent Hail!” that frames our Purcell selection. In the original semi-opera, this chorus appears twice during Act IV in conjunction with on-stage appearances of Midsummer’s “real world” royals, Theseus and Hippolyta. Several other portions of the Act IV music are performed tonight. The instrumental “Entry of Phoebus” signaled the arrival from the clouds above of Phoebus Apollo. The entire musical episode, collectively called a masque, begins after Titania has been released from her enchanted infatuation with the Donkey (Bottom). Apollo, not a character in Shakespeare’s play, nevertheless becomes the center of the masque. He sings of his power – as god of the Sun – to give light and warmth, inducing Spring after the “cruel, long Winter.” He also inspires a series of musical reflections on the four seasons, closing with the bass’s chromatic lament “Next, Winter comes.” This lament leads directly into a repeated chorus of “Hail! Great Parent Hail!”

Other selections are drawn from earlier and later passages of the play. The music for Act III opens with the soprano aria “If Love’s a sweet Passion,” sung by a Nymph after Titania has fallen in love with Bottom. The tail end of the aria converts to a choral version. The remainder of the third masque provides musical entertainments for Titania and her lover. First a symphony in French Overture style plays during the entrance of two Swans; later it is the turn of the joyous Haymakers to dance forth. These Haymakers are called Mopsa and Corydon, a countertenor and bass pair of good-natured countryfolk who play out the most foolish of courting scenes (“Now the Maids and the Men”). Purcell specified that both should be played by male singers, with Mopsa in women’s garb to heighten the raucous comedy of their “kissing” duet.

During Act V of The Fairy Queen we pass briefly through a panoply of visitors – nowhere included in Shakespeare’s play – including the penultimate instrumental movement: a Chaconne depicting the dance of a Chinese man and woman, who arrive to sing about marriage’s bliss. Strangely enough, all of these on-stage roles were probably played by children at the work’s first performance. Despite the great music it contains, The Fairy Queen disappeared until being re-discovered in the early 20th century as part of a general revival of Baroque music in historical performance contexts.

Born in 1952 in Finland, Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) was trained early on several musical instruments. Though she also studied fine art, music quickly forced itself into the very center of her life. At the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, she studied composition with Paavo Heininen. Subsequently, in Darmstadt and Freiburg respectively, she undertook private composition lessons with Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber. Saariaho’s works, including several operas, have been commissioned and performed at leading venues throughout the world, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the stages of Paris, London, San Francisco, Berlin, Vienna, and many more. Novel timbre and color remained the focus of her creative efforts right up until her death from a malignant brain tumor in June 2023.

In 2004 Saariaho published her Tempest Songbook, though the individual songs stem from different periods in her recent past. This collection of five movements can be performed in any order. Rather than a song cycle or dramatic narrative, Saariaho has selected five scenes for musical setting – and what a rich setting she provides! The combination of instruments almost guarantees a glittering soundscape: soprano and baritone, violin, viola, cello, double bass, plus flute, clarinet, and harp. (The song “Caliban’s Dream” is omitted from tonight’s performance.)

Consider “Ariel’s Hail” (2000), which starts with arpeggiated figures in harp and flute and ethereal high motives in the soprano voice. The text comes from Act I Sc. 2 of Shakespeare’s play as the wizard Prospero summons forth his captive sprite, Ariel. Saariaho depicts the spirit’s capriciousness with a series of upwardly moving gestures. A few years earlier she had composed “Miranda’s Lament” (1997). This movement bears outward similarities with “Ariel’s Hail,” including soprano voice, various trills and tremolos, and stunning instrumental colors. Despite the variety, one also senses how Saariaho takes great care to knit together voice and instruments through touches of motivic sharing and echoes.

“Prospero’s Vision,” for male voice, opens with utmost restraint and is marked “mysterious, calm.” Saariaho moves from lyric to pointillist gestures, and the recurring opening theme becomes a marker of progress through the form. “Ferdinand’s Comfort,” scored for all players except clarinet, makes a natural conclusion to the set. A lyric exchange between Ariel (soprano) and Ferdinand (baritone) floats in and around Saariaho’s rich scoring, grounded by the sustained low strings. Following just two minutes of fevered activity, the final phrase of quiet tremolos and flute glissandi paints all with an eerie allure.

INTERMISSION

As his letters reveal, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) endured alternating periods of isolation and depression on the one hand, offset by normal social activity and fervent optimism on the other. Shortly after contracting syphilis, the likely cause of his death at age 31, Schubert penned a revealing, hyperbolic poem about his lamentable existence. Mein Gebet (My Prayer) closes with the lines “Take my life, my flesh and blood / Plunge it all in Lethe’s flood, / To a purer, stronger state / Deign me, Great One, to translate.” In spring 1824 he wrote to a friend:

I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have perished . . .

Song was Schubert’s faithful companion, receiving all the feelings and experiences of his brief lifetime: from student essays in the genre, marked with a precocious command of poetry and an inspiring sense of his own talent (e.g., the famed Erlkönig of 1815), all the way through the innovative cycles, Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, to the final song he ever wrote: “Die Taubenpost.” To know even a small portion of Schubert’s 600+ lieder is to count one’s self fortunate, to have a clear glimpse into the essence of his art, to begin taking the measure of the man.

For his texts Schubert generally preferred selections from contemporary German poets, including Heine, Goethe, Rellstab, Rückert, and Eichendorff. On only three occasions did he set material from Shakespeare, even though the Bard enjoyed a towering reputation among German artists and was familiar to most via translations made by A. W. von Schlegel. Interestingly, all three of Schubert’s Shakespeare lieder seem to have emerged together during a short holiday outside Vienna in July 1826.

The first, “Ständchen” (“Serenade,” and not to be confused with the very famous work by that name in Schubert’s Schwanengesang cycle), sets a passage from Act 2 of Cymbeline: “Hark, Hark the Lark.” Schubert frames the text between a piano prelude and postlude. The overall tone is light and breezy, with a subtle change occurring at the mention of the marigold’s “golden eyes.” “An Sylvia” presents a conventional strophic song over three stanzas. The text comes from Act 4 of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as Proteus attempts to woo the delightful Sylvia away from his friend Valentine. The third song, a riotous and virile drinking song, “Trinklied,” derives from Antony and Cleopatra. In this scene from Act 2, high political tension and plotting gets comic relief from the drunken revelry infecting the entire Roman party.

From composer Zachary Wadsworth, we read the following thoughts about Describe Adonis, a world premiere work based on Shakespeare’s sonnets:

The three movements of Describe Adonis take their texts from three of William Shakespeare’s sonnets (numbers 53, 20, and 3, in that order), and they are scored for three musicians: countertenor, baritone, and percussionist (who plays marimba and bell tree). The piece’s title connects to the primary obsessive fixation of 126 of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets: a young man, whom Shakespeare addresses as “fair youth.” More ink has been spilled about this man’s identity (and his relationship with Shakespeare) than I could possibly summarize here. But as I read these poems, I became fascinated by the window they provide into Elizabethan understandings of gender; in each of these three sonnets, Shakespeare describes this young man by evoking images and traits of women.

In the first movement, “What is your substance?” Shakespeare praises the young man by comparing his beauty to that of both the male and female ideals of beauty in ancient Greece: Adonis and Helen of Troy. My setting of this sonnet amplifies its agitation, as Shakespeare strives to understand how one man can cast so many “shadows.”

Gender complexity reaches its peak in the second movement, “Master-mistress of my passion,” in which Shakespeare draws out an elaborate origin story for his subject: nature (identified here as a woman) made the young man first as a woman, but then fell in love with him and accordingly switched his gender (which Shakespeare lewdly and comically describes as his being “pricked out”). Here, we see not only how Shakespeare identifies gender as mutable across time and boundaries of internal and external identity, but also how he nonetheless uses misogynistic stereotypes about women to flatter and prop up his male subject. My musical setting closely tracks this path from praise and affection to lewd joke-making and misogyny.

Finally, the third movement (“That face should form another”) sees a reflection of a mother in her son. Shakespeare invites the young man to look into the mirror, seeing a reflection of his mother in her prime. After this, he implores the young man to reproduce, lest he fail to pass his beauty onto the next generation. My setting leans into the pleading qualities of this poem, the warmth of its flattery, and the bleakness of its final lines (“If thou live remembered not to be, / Die single, and thine image dies with thee.”)


Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s (1840-1893) life was filled turmoil. Some of it reaches all the way to his childhood, when he dreaded being separated from family as he attended private school. A major event occurred with his mother’s death, and it is from this time that his first serious compositional efforts date. Throughout his late teens and early twenties, Tchaikovsky vacillated between intense attachments and feelings of complete isolation. He also wrestled with his homosexuality, going so far as to marry a doting female admirer in 1877 partly to cover or even suppress his true feelings. The situation, as can be imagined, was a complete disaster, and both bride and groom were estranged within weeks, bordering on nervous collapse. Not surprisingly, Tchaikovsky self-identified with characters from certain dramatic story lines, such as Romeo and Juliet and Eugene Onegin, that mirrored his own tragic situation.

Some years earlier, in 1869, Mily Balakirev actually suggested the concept of a Romeo and Juliet Overture to Tchaikovsky. The work proceeded very quickly, with the premiere occurring in early 1870. It was shelved after receiving critical scorn. Eventually Tchaikovsky undertook substantial revisions, though the core of the overture’s two main themes remains intact in both later versions. Finally, after the failed marriage to Antonina Milyukhova, Tchaikovsky returned to the score one final (third) time to add a coda in 1880, and that is the version we hear tonight. He titled it Fantasy-Overture, suggesting a fair amount of license might be taken in the overall form. However, it follows conventional sonata-allegro design (with two themes presented during the exposition, developed and then reprised), plus an introduction and a coda.

The first sounds we hear represent Friar Laurence through a brooding, hymn-like slow introduction brilliantly begun in just bassoons and clarinets. It was one of the suggested revisions from Balakirev that Tchaikovsky adopted. The material expands to include strings, and eventually comes to rest on a plateau marked by harp arpeggios. After a repeat of these developments, Tchaikovsky uses a low timpani roll to foreshadow new material about to arrive. The explosive first main theme bursts dramatically from relative quiet; its jagged, punctuated thrusts symbolize the warring Capulets and Montagues. Tchaikovsky continues the theme in imitative exchanges that could almost accompany stage fighting. After a short transition, the signature love theme (second theme) – one of the composer’s most beloved lyric creations – starts in an understated manner in low strings. The second rendition is already more advanced, complete with sighing pulses from the horns.

During the tense development section, Tchaikovsky juxtaposes motives from the introduction and first theme, culminating in a furious rush of strings overlapping with syncopated jabs from percussion, brass, and winds. By this point the recapitulation is underway. All that remains to complete the form is the reprised second theme, which absolutely soars on the back of high strings. One aspect that makes the theme so affecting is Tchaikovsky’s use of chromatic pitches, as they seek resolution to a nearby diatonic pitch. As the end approaches, we all know the outcome of Shakespeare’s tragic tale of woe. Yet Tchaikovsky’s solution to the required denouement is hard to predict. Signaled by a timpani blast and subsequent death knell, the coda returns to the solemnity of the Friar Laurence world before one final, slightly altered glimpse of the famous love theme. The warring first theme makes no final entrance, and the work closes with a few measures of imperious finality:

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things . . .”

© Jason Stell, 2024