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The Garden of Earthly Delights
Conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-361669-1
07 September 1998
Price: Available on request
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for full orchestra Forces or CategoryFull orchestraDuration21 minutesDifficultyModerately difficult to DifficultOrchestration3 fl (III+picc), 4 ob (IV+ca), 4 cl (III+Eb, IV+bcl), 3 bn, cbn, 6 hn, 4 tpt, 3 tbn, 2 tba, timp, 4 perc (sus cym, cast, crotales, tam, rattle, lion's roar, sz cym, 3 tom, 2 w blk, BD, cbell, whip, vib, claves, guiro, SD, marac, cabaca, tuned gongs, Chinese gong,
Javanese or Thai gongs, clash cym, tamb, mba, glock, tri, flex), 2 hp, str, 3 special players: vln, ssx, tbn (all+claves, rattle, tam)Programme Notes"I have for many years had Hieronymus Boschs visionary triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights in the back of my mind as a potential spring board for a piece of music. Then, a couple of years ago, I went to the Prado in Madrid to see the picture in the flesh and was overwhelmed by its extraordinary individuality and detail. This visit coincided with a series of pieces that I had been working on, all of which dealt with aspects of the imagination Fantastic Mind, a setting of the libertine poet the Earl of Rochester, Torque and Velocity for the
Takacs Quartet and in particular Secret Garden written for the LSO and Colin Davis which was virtually a symphonic sketch for this work.
Bosch (1450-1416), like Blake and Donne, depicts the sacred in a powerfully secular manner. Clearly you can simply open the doors of this tripartite work and describe scenes of innocence (The Garden of Eden), experience (Carnal Knowledge) and retribution (Hell) but, thanks to the originality of the painters mind, what we have is something very much more than that. Something that seems to gather up mythological symbolism (the use of water and fruit to signify sensuality) and leap into the 20th century and the world of Freud and surrealism (phallic cornucopia being a transparent instance).
It would require a staggering genius to
translate all this into music and I have not even tried. Rather I have expressed my own reactions to the piece and indeed added other dimensions. In the opening tableau, for instance, the music suggests that innocence and ignorance are not necessarily bliss, rather there is a sense of melancholy and wistfulness, a longing for something yet to be articulated. In music different strands of the triptych can be superimposed upon each other, thus allowing the simultaneous and interwoven voicing of ideas from all three panels. Furthermore all the material is joined to form a continuous whole. And heres a strange thing without realising that there was a fourth part to the Bosch, I instinctively wrote, at the beginning of the music, an evocation of birth, the growing of a world from nothing
only to find that when the panels of the Bosch are closed they show, as a frontispiece, a haunting, luminous picture of a globe in the act of creation.
I was excited by the possibility of harnessing both the infectious enthusiasm and skill of the NYO and the space of the Albert Hall. So I decided to put three players into loggia boxes at 3, 6 and 9 oclock from the stage as well as playing their usual instruments (Violin, Soprano Saxophone and Trombone), these three players also play percussion. They act as timekeepers, tempters, devils and the sound of omnipotent power at different stages in the music.
Clicking pieces of wood and a little upward flourish on the trumpets open the score and return at critical points. Then comes the awakening with a spiralling flight of
birds and a warm motif on the horn that underpins the whole score. This first section of the music is lush, indulgent even, but gradually the harmonic language, whilst using the same germinal notes becomes (almost autobiographically as it happens) more angular as with Bosch we move from concord to discord, consonance to dissonance. Early on in this opening passage there are some rich and sonorous chords, reflecting perhaps the majesty of Creation and these too have a significant role to play as the score unfolds.
Gradually the music moves into a more excitable phase as the external players pick up notes from the trumpet. This exhilarates the clarinet section into some wild acrobatics (a throwback to an idea begun in my clarinet concerto) which in turn draws from the rest of
the orchestra some gentle sensuous music, a loving twist, if you like, not to be found in the centrepiece of the Bosch. The tempo inexorably quickens, games of the chase taken on a more sinister hue, a pair of high piccolos are partnered by a jerking, jumping pair of low tubas. Whilst the Bosch has not been programmatically followed, I found some images irresistible a Machiavellian ratchet brought to mind a modern rattle and figures stretched across harps prompted yet another obvious musical analogy. I have also used the Cuica (Lions Roar) not so much for its fearsome sound (its actually not that loud) but more for its dirty growl!
At the climax of the fast music weeping strings are subjected to a brutal attack from the wind, their final desperate line leading to ideas from
the opening which now create the close; the clicking wood, trumpets and majestic chords are transmogrified into the overwhelming voice of judgement.
© Michael Berkeley 1998
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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Michael Berkeley (b.1948) Michael Berkeley was born in 1948. He studied composition, singing, and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but it was not until his late twenties, when he went to study with Richard Rodney Bennett, that Berkeley began to concentrate exclusively on composing. In 1977 he was awarded the Guinness Prize for Composition; two years later he was appointed Associate Composer to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Since then Michael's music has been played all over the globe and by some of the world's finest musicians. Most of Michael's significant orchestral work, much of his chamber music and his operas are available on CD as part of the Chandos Berkeley Edition. For ten years from 1995
Michael was artistic director of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music. He currently presents Radio 3's Private Passions, which won the Broadcasting Press Guild's Radio Programme of the Year Award in 1996, and is Chairman of the Governors of The Royal Ballet.Michael Berkeley's website
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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