Best Performances of 20th/21st Century music

One of Dr. Beverly Hay's former students came back for an alumna recital, either my freshman or sophomore year. Every piece on the recital was new and exciting. I especially fell in love with the song cycle by Ned Rorem, entitled Ariel, a setting of five poems written by Sylvia Plath. While I admit Sylvia Plath may not be my favorite poet, the way that Ned Rorem set these poems absolutely spoke to my heart and my emotions. It is also so important that these be sung with conviction. I could not find anyone actually performing, but this recording has become my favorite.

 

 

Ariel by Ned Rorem

 

Performed by: Jesslyn Thomas

 

I. Words

 

Axes after whose stroke the wood rings,

And the echoes!
Echoes travelling
Off from the centre like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road______

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.

 

 

What is most interesting to me in this opening is that it immediately engages you. The singer does not come in immediately and the instruments help create a sort of mood. The darkness of these poems speaks volumes through the musical aspects. It is very interesting to me that he would choose to use a clarinet, a piano, and a soprano voice. It all creates a feeling of dread.

 

 

II. Poppies in July

 

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little bloody skirts!

There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep!
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless. Colorless.

 

 

 

 

What I enjoy most about this selection is the simplicity of the clarinet and piano parts. The text painting in this is remarkable. It was wonderful when the poem expressed that the poppies were "colorless" that every aspect of the music ceased to exist.

 

 

III. The Hanging Man

 

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid: 

A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.

 

 

 

What strikes me the most in this selection is the fact that the piano and the clarinet seem to be arguing with each other. Because the poem is speaking about two people (The Hanging Man and the poet), the composer decided that the music should convey this idea.

 

IV. Poppies in October

 

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.

Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly --

A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky

Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.

O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.

 

 

I really enjoy the sense of calming down more in this piece. It is a good contrast from the rushed nature of the other pieces. I really enjoy how legato everything is as opposed to "Poppies In July." This is great for showing the contrast of these flowers in different seasons and months.

 



V. Lady Lazarus

 

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

 

 

I really love how the composer calmed down the movement before, just to shake things up. I love that he got back to the idea that she was truly crazy during this movement. I feel like this is the point in her life where she is thinking of taking her own life.

 

Overall, this whole song cycle is a very dark. I was very surprised to find that a song cycle had even been thought of that was based on Sylvia Plath's poems. This has become one of my favorite song cycles over the past couple years here. I wish to hear it sung again sometime and look forward to it!