Ottorino Respighi (1879 - 1936)
Ottorino Respighi (1879 - 1936)
La Primavera
The works of Respighi here recorded are based ontexts by Armenian poets. Since Armenia was historically the first state toadopt Christianity as its official religion, Armenian epic and narrative poetrywas in Christian hands and mainly of ecclesiastical inspiration. NersesShenorhali was the most famous and prolific poet and song-writer of the twelfthcentury and many of his works, prose-poems, hymns and riddles, are stillpopular today. Gosdandin Erzengasti, one of the first serious poets of thethirteenth to fourteenth centuries, wrote, in addition to religious and folkpoetry, about romantic love and nature. His many allegories on the subject ofSpring, handed down orally, were not fully collected until the 1860s. ConstantZarian, a contemporary of Respighi, living at that time in Istanbul, clearlyseemed to derive inspiration from Armenian poetry of some six centuries earlierand it may even be that many of his texts, written by himself in Italian, areadaptations rather than original works.
There is no precise record of Respighi"s contactswith Zarian and his interest in Armenian poetry might already have been arousedduring the periods he spent in Russia in 1900-1901 and 1902. In a letter ofFebruary 1917 he mentions his intention of setting Zarian"s poem Voci diChiesa (Church Voices). After abandoning this project, it appears that inJuly 1918 he had started working on La Primavera (Spring), a poem from acycle by Zarian, the first part of which has the title Sirvard, figlia dellaterra (Sirvard, daughter of the earth). Sketches of a further cantata, Inverno(Winter), have come to light and it seems that two symphonic poems withoutvocal parts, Estate (Summer) and Autunno (Autumn), were alsoplanned. Poema autunnale for violin and orchestra (1925) may havebelonged to this unfinished "Spring" cycle.
The cantata La Primavera was completed in 1919and was immediately followed by the symphonic poem Ballata delle Gnomidi andthe fairy-tale opera La bella dormente net bosco. It was first performedin Rome on 4th March 1923 under the baton of Bernardino Molinari. Respighi wasdisappointed at the cool reception of the work, believing that the performershad been unable to cope with its difficulties. In a biography of her husband in1954 Elsa Respighi complains about the lack of a proper Italian performance of LaPrima vera, considering that critical opinion still lacked a basis forjudgement. That it is indeed a demanding work for all participants may alsohave been a reason for relatively infrequent performances. In 1924 the cantatawas given its first American performance at the Ann Arbor Festival underthe direction of Frederick Stock and we learn from Respighi"scorrespondence that contacts were established in 1924 and 1925 with WilhelmFurtwangler and Willem Mengelberg, but there is no indication that performancesunder these conductors ever took place. Detailed information on pastperformances is no longer held by the publisher of the cantata, since old fileshave been discarded.
In his memoir on Respighi, published in 1985,Gianandrea Gavazzeni expressed disparaging views on La Prima vera. Afterconsidering the composer"s bad taste in his choice of some poets, he expresseshis disappointment at the first performance of the cantata, at which, it seems,he was present, owing to the fact that it was based on what he calls atranslation of a bad text by Constant Zarian, "a contemporary Greekpoet". After a brief disquisition on other Greek poets, Gavazzenicriticizes Zarian, declaring that "those empty pseudo-poetical banalitieshave also influenced the structure and general taste of the cantata"."It is unfortunate", he continues, " that Respighi had to becomeinfatuated with such a sequence of saccharine nonsense". Of MaestroGavazzeni, whom the present writer deeply admires and considered destined tochampion this cantata, it must be asked which among the many Italian operasbased on silly libretti he has ever refused to conduct for similar reasons. Inthe same context it is hardly believable that inferior poetry would affect thequality of the music, if the composer is a good one.
With La Primavera Respighi"s remarkableexcursion into the field of the cantata finds its triumphant affirmation. Aretusa(1911), Il Tramonto (1914) and La Sensitiva (1915), all basedon texts by Shelley and written for the Italian mezzo-soprano Chiarina Fino-Savio,show the composer"s predilection for a vocal symphonic poem, avoiding thecharacter of oratorio, somehow between traditional cantata and opera, which hecalled poema, or poem et to, lirico. Although La Primavera isbased on a text of religious connotation, it is conceived in a quasi-dramaticway, since a few dramatic indications are added to the score, in order to helpperformers and audience to understand better its atmosphere. It is notonly the inclusion of a large chorus and six soloists that makes LaPrimavera a large-scale work but also the fact that its poetic message haslost the sense of intimacy proper to the earlier cantatas, to become acelebration involving larger audiences. Nevertheless the title poema lirico andthe musical structure of the symphonic poem are preserved. The nature-inspiredchoral works of Frederick Delius, Songs of Sunset, Sea Drift and TheSong of the High Hills, or his Idyll for two soloists and orchestra,are, in a way, similar in their lyrical and impressionistic mood to Respighi"scantatas, and with its powerful and rapturous celebratory character LaPrimavera even reaches the dimensions of Delius" Mass of Life.
Scored for an orchestra including double windinstruments, with an additional third flute behind the orchestra, and E flatand bass clarinets, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, LaPrimavera includes, in addition to a conventional string ensemble, timpani,two harps, celesta, piano (occasionally for four hands), organ, glockenspiel,triangle, cymbals and tam-tam.
In its dramatic structure the cantata can be dividedinto seven episodes. Their titles were not assigned by the composer, but havebeen added by the present writer for this recording:
[1] Invocation
The scene is set in the country near a dark andmysterious forest. The Praying One (Orante) calls on God and prays him to pourthe mysteries of spring into everyone"s soul and to give the sun its necessarywarmth. Spring enters in full light and sweetness and is welcomed by everyonewith childish astonishment and praise.
[2] Voices of the breezes, of water and of theflowers
Breezes come down from the star-lit skies to caressthe flowers. Waters from high mountains rejoice, reflecting the skies and wateringthe trees: they announce themselves through singing waterfalls and invitelovers to drink. Flowers grow aware of their colours and scents. Together withall voices, the Praying One resumes his hymn and invites everyone to celebratethis feast of Spring, a passage that culminates in a passionate orchestralepisode.
[3] The young man"s longings
By observing nature"s renewal a lonely young manrealises changes within himself. Hearing the song of a bird, he remembershaving once seen wandering through the countryside a beautiful girl, whose eyeshe could never forget and whose path he wanted to follow. Meanwhile the voicesof nature greet the sun and the young man plays his flute.
[4] The old man"s memories
An old man comes by and expresses his desire to visitagain the countryside where he spent his youth. He does not want to die beforehe has seen Spring in full beauty and fears that from the moment earth withers,his own life will wither away. He feels the pulsating earth and his heartpulsating. The young man tells him that any old man who survives Spring canlive for many years.
[5] Enraptured maidens - Sirvard"s reverie
It is the turn of a group of young girls, seeking toknow why nature shows itself to them through all this germinating, rustling andsinging. The more they enjoy these signs of Spring, the more they feel thatthey are about to experience something new. While they shower each other withgifts, two among them reveal sensuous feelings of love for each other. Sirvard,another girl of particular beauty, is being aroused by her companions from herstrange reverie of a mysterious pathway through the forest. The orchestralmeditation that follows lets us feel that Sirvard is now growing into maturity.
[6] Meeting of the young man and Sirvard
The Praying One welcomes the mystery, announced byGod through magic signs in the water. The encounter of the young man withSirvard is introduced by the orchestra describing the growth of love. The girlfeels embarrassed at the admiration bestowed on her. She reveals that she isseeking her favourite tree, adorned with white blossoms like a bride, and theyoung man offers to accompany her. Sirvard accepts.
[7] Hymn to Spring
In a triumphant finale, introduced by the Praying Oneand enhanced by all the voices of nature, the celebration reaches its climax.God, "an infant with innocent looks like those of a man in love",offers Spring and its mystery of love to his creatures, who all receive it asthe gift of Life.
The music of La Primavera, opening in D flatmajor and ending in A major, is constructed on three principal motifs, mostlyconnected with the sections for the chorus and for the baritone. The remainingsections for soprano, tenor and bass, are conceived in a more mezzo-caratterestyle, at times introduced and interrupted by short but elaborate orchestralepisodes. In the orchestral introduction to the cantata (Part 1) the principalmotif is stated, a jubilant 7/4 theme of dionysiac rather than religiouscharacter and in the hypo-ionian mode. The following G flat major Halleluja,heard in the orchestra after the baritone"s invocation, is pentatonic. Thethird is an exuberantly bouncing, post-romantic theme, with florid figurationsand syncopations, symbolizing passion. This forms the extended orchestralepisode preceding the tenor"s first arioso (Part 3) and is carried over intohis duets with the bass and with the soprano. There is a more typicalimpressionistic variation, reduced to the solo of the flute behind theorchestra, as in Respighi"s La Sensitiva, imitating bird- song.Respighi"s orchestral impressionism reaches moments of tense atmosphereparticularly in the second section, where the chromatic female chorus part issustained by cascades of glissandi, tremoli, arabesques of all instruments, andin the sixth section, where a more transparent orchestral writing supports theexpansive love duet between soprano and tenor. Mysterious moods occur in thefourth section, after the bass arioso, in which the old man physicallyexperiences the pulsations of earth, and towards the end of the fifth sectionin which the girls, almost enviously, reproach Sirvard for her naivety beforethe mystery that she has been chosen to experience. The last section isconceived in the form of a sensuous waltz of scherzoso character, leading intoa trio in 2/4. The latter is nothing else but an innocent homoerotic scenebetween the second soprano and the mezzo-soprano.
Elsa and Ottorino Respighi were married on 13thJanuary 1919. In Respighi"s correspondence shortly preceding this event LaPrimavera occupies a particular place and in his letters to his fiancéephrases of love are often mingled with allusions to his work on the cantata, inphrases like: "Spring is coming to me. Your entry into my life, Elsa, bringsSpring into my soul", or "how could I set to music without enthusiasmverses such as: The last time I saw her -the Virgin surrounded in light -as shesoftly stepped over the grass and the flowers, where did she go? Her eyes werethe most beautiful."
La Primavera belongs to Respighi"s autobiographical or key groupof works, consisting of operas, cantatas and songs that give some insight intoa complex personality, torn between ascetic ideals, often reaching the domainof pantheistic mysticism, and the sensual realities of the world. Musiccertainly helped him to find his mental and physical equilibrium. Very littleis known, however, about the composer"s apparently complex inner world, whichwas often a mystery even to his wife, his ex-pupil Elsa, fifteen years hisjunior. The poetry he chose to set to music suggests a confrontation withideologies of life ranging from a desire of integration with nature (Shelley)to an enraptured and mystical search for the Creator (Zarian). A fatalisticrefusal of social integration and a desire to escape into a cosmic world (Lacampana sommersa, adapted from the play by Gerhard Hauptmann) leads finallyto a submission to the daemonic forces of the supernatural (La fiamma, adaptedfrom the play The Witch by G. Wiers Jenssen), or to those of brutalhuman violence (Lucrezia, after Titus Livius and Shakespeare). Respighidied three years before the outbreak of World War II. After the extremes of Lafiamma and Lucrezia one might have expected an interesting and evenmore troubling development of aesthetics and style. There are critics, however,who still consider Respighi a superficial tone-poet, or, as we are told, forexample, in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a man of"a very simple, even childish" personality, incapable of deeperemotions.
Quattro liriche su poesie popolari armene
The song-cycle Quattro liriche su poesie popolariarmene was composed in 1921 and dedicated to Elsa Respighi, who gave thefirst performance in Prague on 18th April of the same year, accompanied by herhusband. This was during the Respighis" first concert tour as chambermusicians. After performing in towns in Italy, they gave concerts inBratislava, Brno, Bohemia and Vienna. Other works included in the programmewere violin sonatas by Respighi and Tartini (the latter in Respighi"stranscription and both played by Mario Corti) and cantatas by composers of theseventeenth century or Italian folk-songs, also adapted by Respighi. There werealso concerts with orchestra. In Prague on 19th April Elsa gave the firstperformance of the string orchestra version of II Tramonto, with herhusband conducting and on 29th April that of La Sensitiva, under thebaton of Vaclav Talich.
It is important to know that the second and third ofthese songs were recorded, with seven from other groups, by Elsa and OttorinoRespighi in 1927 on Brazilian shellac. They remain unique sound documents ofunforgettable artistic and historical value. Needless to say, in transcribingthe original piano accompaniment for an Armenian-like deste ensemble offlute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, trombone and harp, the authorwas inspired by the moving interpretation of the Respighis. Elsa Respighi, whosome nine years ago saw and authorised the present instrumental adaptation,found that it "instinctively emphasized the cycle"s religious and popularatmosphere".
The first song, Respighi"s own Kindertotenlied, almoststrictly set in C sharp minor, has its melody in the Phrygian mode, based on aG sharp bourdon. Its plaintive and moto perpetuo character transportsthe listener into a delicate pastoral mood after the voice"s silence.
A joyful song in F major follows of a more definitepastoral character. The vocal line is set over an undulating melody suggestinga shawm (the Armenian surna), the character of which it is easier tosuggest through a wind instrument than by means of the keyboard.
The third song is an extended dirge (here transcribedto suggest a clarinet- like duduk atmosphere), in which we learn thatthis time the lamenting mother is the Blessed Virgin. Its F sharp minor vocalline rises in a crescendo from resignation to desperation, underlined by anincreased thickening of the accompaniment, emphasized by a syncopated ostinatofiguration from the oboe, later doubled by the bassoon, starting at the changeinto a seven-bar B major episode in the hypo-ionian mode.
The last song, in B flat minor with a central episodein F major, is built up into a three-part prayer of changing moods, from theinitially solemn into the more intimate, transfigured before the climax of afervent hymn. The harp should suggest here plucked instruments such as theArmenian tar and saz.
All four songs in this cycle end with shortinstrumental postludes echoing the predominantly melismatic vocal lines. As in LaPrimavera, the composer apparently did not feel the need to use typical mugamat(Armenian folk-scales) and restricted himself to archaic church modes toprovide the exotic-religious atmosphere of its texts.
With Tre preludi sopra melodie gregoriane forpiano (1921), the four Armenian songs are the first works of Respighi inspiredby church modes, to which he had been introduced by Elsa, considering them herbridal gift. Having taken a degree in Gregorian chant, she thus becameresponsible for an important turning-point in her husband"s career as acomposer. Other works of Armenian inspiration by Respighi include the lovely Canzonearmena from his Sei pezzi of 1926 for piano duet (also available inan orchestral version by the author) and a vocalise on an Armenian theme in hisRussian-inspired ballet of 1920 La pentola magica.
Issued in the year of her 100th birthday, thisrecording is not only an act of homage to Elsa Respighi"s incrediblepersonality but also a personal gift from the author in highest gratitude forher long and unforgettable friendship.
Adriano (edited by Keith Anderson)