Solstice: Seven Poems of Don Maclennan (2004)
for tenor, horn and piano
Commissioned by SAMRO Endowment for the National Arts
Publisher: Bardic Edition
Score BDE 908and Horn Part BDE 908a
Available from Goodmusic Publishing
Duration: c. 19 minutes
Première
Out of town première: 2008; Grahamstown; Musa Nkuna tenor, Shannon Armer horn, Christine Lucia piano
First performance: Thursday 14 August 2008; Musaion, Pretoria, South Africa; Musa Nkuna tenor, Shannon Armer horn, Christine Lucia piano
Programme note
I first met Don Maclennan during a short stay in Grahamstown in August 1997, when I was visiting composer in the Department of Music at Rhodes University. The first book of his poetry I encountered was Solstice: it was launched a few months after my visit and Christine Lucia sent me a copy in London. I was struck by the spareness of the writing complemented by the richness of thought that lay behind it. Although as a composer one is always looking for verse that might be set, I realised at once that I could never ‘set’ this poetry; it was definitely in no need of a composer’s hand. When Musa Nkuna requested a work some years later, it was nevertheless to Don Maclennan’s poetry that I turned, and from Solstice that I eventually chose seven poems that I loved most. My interest was to provide a setting for the poems rather than ‘setting’ words, and as by now I had Voice and String Quartet – a wordless piece also written for Nkuna – under my belt, I took the opportunity to plunder this work, so The Well, Ownership, and Envoi have their musical origins in it. I added words to this existing music with little adaptation, a process that does not draw attention to the cadence of words in the way earlier composers have done but allows the words to speak for themselves. Self-Knowledge quotes some phrases from the 2nd movement of my String Quartet No 1. (Don was at the premiere in Grahamstown and told me afterwards how the 2nd movement had worked for him, while the first hadn’t.) Poetry revisits a tenor aria from the first scene of my opera Searching for Salome. Reduction is itself a reduction: the piano takes a break and there is a duet for tenor and horn, the vocal line based on an uhadi bow song, the horn standing in for the uhadi bow. Finally Blue … it came ‘out of the blue’. There are few classical models for horn, voice and instruments: Schubert’s Auf dem Strom is the most significant; but Britten’s Serenade takes the medium into a new realm. I studied them both very closely as I worked on mine, and gave the horn an important role both in duet with the voice and as a soloist, in much the same way Britten did. After pausing for breath in the fourth song, the horn launches into what is effectively a mini horn concerto, with occasional lines from the voice; and in the final song, the horn again has a considerable solo role. The final ordering of songs was dictated by musical structure rather than poetic narrative. It is my journey through the book, pausing to reflect musically on particular poems. I guess I was struck by the way they reference music, poetry, the artist.
Solstice: Seven Poems of Don Maclennan was composed between January and August 2004 in Johannesburg. It was commissioned by SAMRO Endowment for the National Arts for Nkuna and Trio Capricorn of Cologne and is dedicated to Don Maclennan and Musa Nkuna. The poems are taken from Maclennan’s Solstice, published in 1997 by Snailpress in association with Scottish Cultural Press, and used with the permission of the poet. The premiere was given on 15 August 2008 in the Musaion, University of Pretoria.
for tenor, horn and piano
- The Well
- Blue
- Self-Knowledge
- Poetry
- Ownership
- Reduction
- Envoi
Commissioned by SAMRO Endowment for the National Arts
Publisher: Bardic Edition
Score BDE 908and Horn Part BDE 908a
Available from Goodmusic Publishing
Duration: c. 19 minutes
Première
Out of town première: 2008; Grahamstown; Musa Nkuna tenor, Shannon Armer horn, Christine Lucia piano
First performance: Thursday 14 August 2008; Musaion, Pretoria, South Africa; Musa Nkuna tenor, Shannon Armer horn, Christine Lucia piano
Programme note
I first met Don Maclennan during a short stay in Grahamstown in August 1997, when I was visiting composer in the Department of Music at Rhodes University. The first book of his poetry I encountered was Solstice: it was launched a few months after my visit and Christine Lucia sent me a copy in London. I was struck by the spareness of the writing complemented by the richness of thought that lay behind it. Although as a composer one is always looking for verse that might be set, I realised at once that I could never ‘set’ this poetry; it was definitely in no need of a composer’s hand. When Musa Nkuna requested a work some years later, it was nevertheless to Don Maclennan’s poetry that I turned, and from Solstice that I eventually chose seven poems that I loved most. My interest was to provide a setting for the poems rather than ‘setting’ words, and as by now I had Voice and String Quartet – a wordless piece also written for Nkuna – under my belt, I took the opportunity to plunder this work, so The Well, Ownership, and Envoi have their musical origins in it. I added words to this existing music with little adaptation, a process that does not draw attention to the cadence of words in the way earlier composers have done but allows the words to speak for themselves. Self-Knowledge quotes some phrases from the 2nd movement of my String Quartet No 1. (Don was at the premiere in Grahamstown and told me afterwards how the 2nd movement had worked for him, while the first hadn’t.) Poetry revisits a tenor aria from the first scene of my opera Searching for Salome. Reduction is itself a reduction: the piano takes a break and there is a duet for tenor and horn, the vocal line based on an uhadi bow song, the horn standing in for the uhadi bow. Finally Blue … it came ‘out of the blue’. There are few classical models for horn, voice and instruments: Schubert’s Auf dem Strom is the most significant; but Britten’s Serenade takes the medium into a new realm. I studied them both very closely as I worked on mine, and gave the horn an important role both in duet with the voice and as a soloist, in much the same way Britten did. After pausing for breath in the fourth song, the horn launches into what is effectively a mini horn concerto, with occasional lines from the voice; and in the final song, the horn again has a considerable solo role. The final ordering of songs was dictated by musical structure rather than poetic narrative. It is my journey through the book, pausing to reflect musically on particular poems. I guess I was struck by the way they reference music, poetry, the artist.
Solstice: Seven Poems of Don Maclennan was composed between January and August 2004 in Johannesburg. It was commissioned by SAMRO Endowment for the National Arts for Nkuna and Trio Capricorn of Cologne and is dedicated to Don Maclennan and Musa Nkuna. The poems are taken from Maclennan’s Solstice, published in 1997 by Snailpress in association with Scottish Cultural Press, and used with the permission of the poet. The premiere was given on 15 August 2008 in the Musaion, University of Pretoria.
