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La Terra Impareggiabile
978-0-19-355839-7
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Paperback
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May 2010 (estimated)
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This item is not yet published. Orders for not-yet-published items are supplied and charged immediately on publication.
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for voice and piano
These four songs are settings of texts by the Sicilian poet Quasimodo (1901-68). They are the start of a much bigger cycle of ten songs that is a long-standing project for the composer. Various images of nature and folk traditions are an important part of the text, and Causton's music explores this relationship between the individual and his surroundings. Forces or CategoryVoice & pianoDuration25 minutesProgramme NotesSong-cycle for baritone and piano
on poems by Salvatore Quasimodo
Book One
I. La Terra Impareggiabile
II. Rifugio dUccelli Notturni
III. Ho una Bella Fanciulla (first Sappho fragment)
IV. Specchio
Book Two
V. In Luce di Cieli
VI. Quale Dolce Mela (second Sappho fragment)
VII. Nel Senso di Morte
VIII. Al di Là delle Onde delle Colline
I first encountered the work of the Sicilian poet and Nobel laureate Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968) ten years ago and was instantly captivated by it. This song cycle brings together six of his poems and two of his translations of Sapphic poetry. Arranged in two Books, the songs are closely interlinked musically and poetically, and trace a trajectory from life to death.
In the first
song the poet, poignantly aware his time running out, utters words of love that have so far eluded him. The opening vocal line and perfect fifth in the piano (the notes D and G) become a sort of recurring signal that also appears at the start of songs V and VIII. The imagery of nature, and of trees in particular, is a constant in Quasimodos poetry, and in this context the Rifugio dUccelli Notturni (refuge to birds of the night) is a gnarled pine which stands on high, listening intently to the abyss. In the third song, the first of the two translations of poems originally by Sappho, the words become fragmented and assembled out of order, like text on strips of papyrus wrapped in different ways. Like Quale Dolce Mela, it uses only six of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, giving it
quite a different sound from the other songs. The next song, Specchio, evokes the energy and even violence of growth, as the green bud ruptures the bark of a tree.
In In Luce di Cieli the poet recalls youth from a position of remote isolation, and the waters of forests and glades/shining in remote auras are referred to nostalgically as part of what has been lost. Quale Dolce Mela, the second translation of Sappho, is a fragment giving us just a glimpse of people gathering apples in the ancient world. The trees in Nel Senso di Morte have quite a different feel; the fertile images of rain and of oscillating light seen through branches suddenly implode upon the poet at the end of the song as he is forced to face his own mortal self. The final song revisits the opening music of songs
I and V; there is a circularity here, and the poet, gently reminding us of the futility of secret numbers, star signs and cabals, is now addressing someone who has died.
La Terra Impareggiabile is dedicated to my composition teacher, Jeremy Dale Roberts.
© Richard Causton 2005
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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Richard Causton (b.1971) Richard Causton was born in London in 1971 and studied at the University of York, the Royal College of Music and the Scuola Civica in Milan. He has worked with world renowned performers such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, London Sinfonietta, and the Nash Ensemble. He has been the recipient of several awards, including First Prize in the International 'Nuove Sincronie competition, the Mendelssohn Scholarship and a 2004 British Composer Award in the Best Instrumental Work category for Seven States of Rain. He was founder of the Royal College of Music Gamelan Programme and held
the Fellow Commonership in the Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge.Richard Causton on the Birmingham Conservatoire website
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