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Memorials of Sleep
Conductor's score and parts on hire
978-0-19-366593-4
15 June 1998
Price: Available on request
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for tenor and chamber orchestra
To poems by Lawrence Durrell Forces or CategoryTenor soloist & chamber orchestraDuration18 minutesDifficultyDifficultOrchestrationfl, afl (+picc), ob (+ca), cl, bcl, bn (+cbn), 2 hn, hp, perc (mar, crotales, sus cym, 6 tuned gong tam, metal wind chime), strProgramme
Notes1. Echoes
2. Lesbos
3. A Water-Colour of Venice
4. Aphrodite
5. Water Music
6. Nemea
7. Finis
Lawrence Durrell is nowadays rather better known as a novelist, and chronicler of the Aegean and Mediterranean, than as a poet. But his poetry has all the rich, warm sensuality of his best prose, and Durrell thought of himself as a poet no less than a novelist.
In 1992 I chose his magically evocative Water Music as the text for a song (which I called The Swing of the Sea) for voice and small ensemble. At the time I planned to add others, to make up a cycle, and at last came this opportunity to write for tenor and orchestra. I have re-worked that song as one of the
seven that now make up Memorials of Sleep.
Six of the songs are (generally) reflective, lyrical, and in slow or moderate tempi; but the central fourth song, Aphrodite, is, perhaps unexpectedly, stormy, dramatic and very fast. Around this the other songs are arranged in a loosely symmetrical way; there are two water musics (Nos. 3 and 5), and both Lesbos and Nemea (Nos. 2 and 6) describe particular places in Greece (to which so far I have only been in my imagination!). Musical cross-references abound, the most immediately obvious being that the opening music of Echoes returns, rather like a frame to the cycle, at the end of Finis. Sleep is a recurrent image in these poems; however the title is taken from Bitter Lemons, a poem which in the end I did not choose, but which includes
the lines
Let the old sea-nurses keep
Their memorials of sleep
And the Greek seas curly head
Keep its calm like tears unshed.
Memorials of Sleep was written between late 1997 and April 1998. It was commissioned by Aldeburgh Productions on behalf of Mr and Mrs Richard Davey, for Richards 50th birthday. The work is dedicated to them, and also to the memory of Anthony Foord. Tony was a great supporter of music and the arts in Suffolk, and beyond, but of the Aldeburgh Festival in particular. The first performance was given by John-Mark Ainsley (tenor) with the Britten-Pears Orchestra conducted by Sîan Edwards, at Snape Maltings on 3 August 1998.
© Anthony Powers 1998
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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Anthony Powers (b.1953) Born in London in 1953, Anthony Powers studied at Oxford, in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and at York with David Blake and Bernard Rands. He taught for two years at Dartington College of Arts before being appointed Composer-in-Residence to Southern Arts. Since then he has moved to Herefordshire where he continues to divide his time between composing and teaching, currently at Cardiff University, where he has been Professor of composition since 2004.
Powers's music is characterized by strong architectonic frameworks that support a language of poetic intensity and magical sonorities. His music often takes its inspiration from the tension between different states, be they physical properties, landscapes, seasons or emotions.Anthony Powers at Cardiff University
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Echoes
Lesbos
A Water-Colour of Venice
Aphrodite
Water Music
Nemea
Finis
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