Memento Mori
10'
for 16 voice mixed chorus
Program Note
Memento mori
Memento Mori was written for the extraordinary New York Virtuoso Singers under a commission from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust in 2003. It is dedicated with admiration to Harold Rosenbaum, the wonderful conductor and important advocate for excellence of the highest order in choral music from the remotest corners of history through that composed only yesterday.
The musical materials originate as a response to some emotionally moving texts. These texts seemed to be intimately related and highly complementary though they were written in entirely different circumstances and at great historical distance from one another. The musical treatment interleaves them linking text images to one another in a polyphonic texture that can only be characterized as more 'instrumental' than vocal. The intelligibility of the text is rather deliberately obscured throughout, with some phrases and text images given a treatment of relative clarity; an elevated status appropriate to their significance.
Much could be said about the musical materials and their relationships to the texts. Suffice it to say, that the piece can be considered a "winter piece", and has been conceived as a kind of meditation upon the transformative light embedded in the poetic images. -DF
If this choral piece is altogether more somber, as well as more evidently aware of musical his- tory, that must have something to do with its subject matter. Nevertheless, the composer’s life experience may also be involved, for, when asked about his formative musical experiences by a Sequenza21 interviewer he said: “I was a singer and deeply loved 15th- and 16th-century contrapuntal stuff, particularly the Venetians.” It is not difficult to connect this statement with the section late in Memento mori where choirs of women and men answer one another, though the rich harmonic coloring found more generally in this 16-part composition might suggest a Renaissance master from another region of Italy: Gesualdo. Despite Felder’s remark about the polyphonic texture being “instrumental,” this is supremely effective—and challenging —writing for voices, taking account of the rhythm of breathing, the immense range of textures available, and the sounds and meanings of the words. The octaves on “sol,” for instance, are preceded by clearings to leave triads for the immediately preceding settings of the word. Also to be noted is the seamless introduction of the medieval text shortly after this, as if the Neruda poem had become transparent to words from centuries before.
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Memento mori
Memento Mori was written for the extraordinary New York Virtuoso Singers under a commission from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust in 2003. It is dedicated with admiration to Harold Rosenbaum, the wonderful conductor and important advocate for excellence of the highest order in choral music from the remotest corners of history through that composed only yesterday.
The musical materials originate as a response to some emotionally moving texts. These texts seemed to be intimately related and highly complementary though they were written in entirely different circumstances and at great historical distance from one another. The musical treatment interleaves them linking text images to one another in a polyphonic texture that can only be characterized as more 'instrumental' than vocal. The intelligibility of the text is rather deliberately obscured throughout, with some phrases and text images given a treatment of relative clarity; an elevated status appropriate to their significance.
Much could be said about the musical materials and their relationships to the texts. Suffice it to say, that the piece can be considered a "winter piece", and has been conceived as a kind of meditation upon the transformative light embedded in the poetic images. -DF
If this choral piece is altogether more somber, as well as more evidently aware of musical his- tory, that must have something to do with its subject matter. Nevertheless, the composer’s life experience may also be involved, for, when asked about his formative musical experiences by a Sequenza21 interviewer he said: “I was a singer and deeply loved 15th- and 16th-century contrapuntal stuff, particularly the Venetians.” It is not difficult to connect this statement with the section late in Memento mori where choirs of women and men answer one another, though the rich harmonic coloring found more generally in this 16-part composition might suggest a Renaissance master from another region of Italy: Gesualdo. Despite Felder’s remark about the polyphonic texture being “instrumental,” this is supremely effective—and challenging —writing for voices, taking account of the rhythm of breathing, the immense range of textures available, and the sounds and meanings of the words. The octaves on “sol,” for instance, are preceded by clearings to leave triads for the immediately preceding settings of the word. Also to be noted is the seamless introduction of the medieval text shortly after this, as if the Neruda poem had become transparent to words from centuries before.
Additional Notes
Texts for Memento mori, by David Felder
Pablo Neruda (reprinted with permission); translated by Alastair Read
Plenos poderes
A puro sol escribo, a plena calle,
A pleno mar, en donde puedo canto, Solo la noche errante me detiene
Pero en su interrupcion recojo espacio, Recojo sombra para mucho tiempo
El trigo negro de la noche crece Mientras mis ojos miden la pradera
Y asÌ de sol a sol hago las llaves:
busco en la oscuridad las cerraduras
y voy abriendo al mar las puertas rotas hasta llenar armarios con espuma.
Y no me canso de ir y de volver,
No me para la muerte con su piedra, No me canso de ser y de no ser.
A veces me pregunto si de donde Si de padre o de madre o cordillera Herede los deberes minerals,
Los hilos de un oceano encendido
Y se que sigo y sigo porque sigo
Y canto porque canto y porque canto.
No tiene explicacÌon lo que acontece Cuando cierro los ojos y circulo Como entre dos canales submarinos, Uno a morir me lleva en su ramaje
Y el otro canta para que yo cante.
AsÌ pues de no ser estoy compuesto Y como el mar asalta el arrecife Con capsulas saladas de blancura
Y retrata la piedra con la ola,
AsÌ lo que en la muerte me rodea
Abre en mÌ la ventana de la vida
Y en pleno paroxismo estoy durmiendo. A plena luz camino por la sombra
Full Powers
I write in the clear sun, in the teeming street, At full sea-tide, in a place where I can sing; Only the wayward night inhibits me,
But, interrupted by it, I recover space,
I gather shadows to last me a long time.
The black crop of the night is growing While my eyes meanwhile take measure
of the meadows.
So, from one sun to the next, I forge the keys. In the darkness, I look for the locks
And keep on opening broken doors to the sea, For it to fill the wardrobes with its foam
And do not weary of going and returning. Death, in its stone aspect, does not halt me.
I am weary neither of being nor of non-being.
Sometimes I puzzle over origins
Was it from my father, my mother or the mountains
That I inherited debts to minerality,
The fine threads spreading from a sea on fire, And I know that I keep on going for goings’ sake,
And I sing because I sing and because I sing.
There is no way of explaining what does happen
When I close my eyes and waver
As between two lost channels under water. One lifts me in its branches toward my dying, And the other sings in order that I may sing.
And so I am made up of a non-being,
And, as the sea goes battering at a reef
In wave on wave of salty white-tops
And drags back stones in its retreating wash, So what there is in death surrounding me Opens in me a window out to living,
And, in the spasm of being, I go on sleeping. In the full light of day, I walk in the shade.
Pablo Neruda From “Alturas. . .”
ix. . .
Serpiente mineral, rosa de piedra Caballo de la luna, luz de piedra Escuadra equinoccial, vapor de piedra. . . Geometria final, libro de piedra
From Worchester Fragments
a. Worldes Blis
Worldes blis ne last no throwe; It went and wit away anon. The langer that ich hit iknowe, The lass ich finde pris tharon; For al it is imeind mid care. . . Al the blis of thisse live
Thu shalt, man, enden ine weep; . . .
A, Sali man, nim tharof keep. . .
Thinc, man. . .
Bithinc thee thane, and up aris . . . and gin to werche good tharwils time to werchen is. . .
b.
Salve lux languentium. . . Salve sine spina rosa. . . Lucens splendoris radio. . .