Engraving by Luc-Albert Moreau; Chansons Madécasses. Durand Editions Musicales, 1926.

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Franz Schubert

Introduction and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" for flute and piano in E minor d. 802 op. posth. 160

The Lied was to occupy most of Franz Schubert’s life. Indeed, the over six-hundred he wrote took the genre to new artistic heights. While the Lied had existed before Schubert, these works lacked the same dramatic force and emotional depth that Schubert was able to achieve. Within his lieder, Schubert deftly crafted rich, powerful, and dramatic melodies which aptly expressed the emotional and intellectual depth of the poetry upon which it was inspired. 

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It seems natural then that, when composing instrumental music, Schubert often drew inspiration from his lieder. His Introduction and Variations on "Trockne Blumen" for flute and piano in E minor d. 802 op. posth. 160 are based upon the lied Trockne Blumen (dried Flowers) from his song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin (The Fair Maiden of the Mill).

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Die Schöne Müllerin tells the tale of a young man who falls in love with a miller’s daughter. While at first the miller’s daughter returns his affections, the young man becomes heart broken when he hears of her marriage to another man. Trockne Blumen is the eighteenth song featured in the cycle. In it, the miserable youth sings of his inability to live if he cannot marry his one true love – the miller’s daughter.

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Peter Sculthorpe 

By the late 20th century, Sculthorpe had firmly established himself within the Australian music scene, and by the 1970’s had found his voice as a composer. Rather than writing music based in western traditions, this decade marks the era when Sculthorpe began writing music based solely upon Indigenous Australian source material.

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Throughout the decade, he wrote various pieces at the behest of the Australian Chamber Orchestra as well as the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. In these works, Sculthorpe artfully blends indigenous melodies with sounds from the natural Australian landscape to create music that sounds distinctly Australian.

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His work Love 200 is a good example of Sculthorpe’s growing experimentalism during the 70’s. Scored for rock band and orchestra, this work attempts to fuse ancient baroque orchestral music with contemporary rock and roll. In writing The Stars Turn (1970), Sculthorpe drew inspiration from Love 200, reworking the work’s more experimental melodies into the folk tunes present in The Stars Turn.

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Night Pieces (1971) are a collection of three works based upon the ancient Japanese artistic concept – Setsugekka, which translates literally as “snow, moon, and flowers” with each element suggestive of a season. Snow is suggestive of Winter, Moon of Autumn, and Flowers of Spring. Thus, at the heart Sculthorpe’s Night Pieces is the idea of change and metamorphosis, whereby Sculthorpe seeks to mimic the transition of the seasons through music.

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Mountains (1981) is based upon Australia’s natural environment. In this piece, Sculthorpe seeks to evoke the majesty and power of the Isle of Mountains – an impressive mountain range in Tasmania. Commissioned by the Sydney International Piano Competition, Mountains was first performed by Gabriella Pusner in 1981 in Verbugghen Hall at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

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Maurice Ravel

Like his contemporary Debussy, Ravel struggled under the strict and regimented tuition of the Paris Conservatory. Although Ravel learned the fundamentals from his teacher Gabriel Fauré, he was to mature as a composer through studying with Eric Satie and Emmanuel Chabrier. From Chabrier, Ravel learned to appreciate exotic folk melodies (particularly Spanish melodies); and from Satie he inherited a sparse musical simplicity. All these influences coalesce in Ravel’s compositions.

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Deux Melodies Hebraiques

Two Hebrew Melodies (1914) are based upon ancient melodies. The Kaddish was a type of liturgical chant typically sung in the synagogue during service. The chant not only praises God but reminds the singers of their obligation to create his kingdom of heaven on Earth. The second melody, L’Enigme Eternelle (the Eternal Enigma) is based upon a Yiddish folksong of the same name. The soprano Alvina Alvi commissioned Ravel to write these two Hebrew Melodies, and both performed the Paris premiere in 1914.

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Chansons Madécasses

Madagascan Songs (1926–28) were inspired by the prose of Evariste-Desire de Parny, a poet who lived in Madagascar in the 1780’s. Ravel apparently purchased a copy of de Parny’s poems from a second-hand book store and fell in love with the exotic nature of the prose. When asked by the wealthy patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge to compose a work, Ravel chose to draw inspiration from de Parny’s poems. While Coolidge gave Ravel free rein to write however he wished, she did have one stipulation – the work must include the cello and flute.

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Over the next few months, Ravel struggled to compose his Chansons Madécasses. At the same time as writing the song cycle, he was also writing his violin sonata, and working on both pieces proved difficult. The Chansons premier was postponed several times, before it was finally unveiled to the public in a concert at the American Embassy in Rome, in May 1926.

 

Notes by James Haywood >​

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