As pianist Jonathan Ware and I prepare for a program of Richard Hundley songs at Trinity Wall Street next Thursday see details, we met with the composer last week to gain his insights and guidance. This experience served as a great eye opener, illustrating what can sometimes be a huge disconnect between the written score and the composers intentions. This disconnect was not created through a lack of attention on the part of either composer or performers, but was a product of us all being human. It helped me to realize that composers are themselves wrestling with how to express on the page what it is they actually want. They are also aware, Richard more than many, that “what they want” evolves from day to day as their ongoing experiences contribute to their thoughts about music.  

Music notation is a remarkable device that has greatly enhanced both the chronicling of music, and our performance practices and standards. Consider how much easier it is to decipher the notes and markings in a newly updated Bärenreiter edition of a Mozart opera than some of the scruffy and error filled versions of the french operas. However, knowing what is written is very different from knowing what it means. It seems obvious but is often forgotten by musicians, myself included, that music is sound. The score is only ever a representation of that sound and can never fully convey the specifics of what the composer wanted. True, some composers were more equipped and more interested/obsessed with showing exactly what they meant. However, one can never know for certain from reading a piece of paper, what sounds the composer had in their head. 

As I eluded to above,this was highlighted in our session with Hundley as so much of what he wanted seemed to be at odds with what Jonathan and I had interpreted from the score. It served as a reminder that once the music is in our hands, the greatest service we can do the composer is to trust ourselves and our instincts. Yes, we must know the composer’s tendencies and desires. We must study the composer and their score, digging out all we can from what is written. But, ultimately, music must transcend the page and live and breath through us and as sound. There are no rules that make good music or good musicians, no written examples that move people. There is only our connection to the work, coupled with our ability to express that connection to an audience.     

Exiled: The Extrication of Kurt Weill. 

James Benjamin Rodgers - Tenor

Kenneth Merrill - Piano

Of all the works I have performed, it may surprise people to learn that Schubert’s setting of “Ständchen” by Rellstab, is one of the most puzzling and difficult to perform from an interpretive perspective. The work has so many contrary elements that, when I hear it or sing it, I don’t know wether to laugh or cry, console or beg, caress or strangle. 

The title, Serenade, implies a song of love, either of hope or expression. That is indeed my impression of the poem, for the most part. However, there are small hints of the unfulfilled or more accurately, forbidden nature of this love. The use of words like entreat, plead and trembling, to name a few. These provide the seed that creates my confusion about this work. Then, we must examine Schubert’s musical contribution here. What will be the nature of this character’s plight? Schubert’s music pleads itself, agonizing over every note and harmonic shift. It feels like it is trying to draw something towards it in the same way a fish is drawn in on a line, forced, not freely. The implication is that, whilst passion and excitement will win tonight, ultimately, this love is doomed and that our serenader’s hopes are destined to be shattered.

How else can I explain the tremendous melancholy that comes over me following this songs completion? There is such loneliness at it’s core. 

Needless to say, I am greatly looking forward to working further with pianist Michael Sheetz on this masterpiece in the upcoming weeks as we try to find our answers to all these puzzles. 

What is to me an astonishing quote by Arthur Komar in his historical background of the Norton Critical Score of Schumann’s Dichterliebe:

“Dichterliebe is probably the most popular of Schumann’s song cycles - if not the most popular of all song cycles as well. This popularity rests, I believe, on the rather cheerful, pretty quality of the songs; even the settings of the sad or serious poems are not very severe.”

What an incredible simplification of the effect of this amazing cycle. I mean really Mr. Komar? Pretty? Cheerful? Those are the words you use to describe the powerful, almost otherworldly effect of one of the greatest musical works ever created? I will bare that in mind in my preparation… Perhaps not. Shame on you and on those that allowed you to publish such utter rot. 

It is an astounding thing when you read about a composer whom you feel you know well, and you uncover a side of them that you never knew existed. I’m currently reading “Speak Low (When You Speak of Love) The letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. What has surprised me is how this man, whom we associate so much with the cynical and dark works he created with Brecht (The Tree Penny Opera being the most famous), was capable of such incredible romanticism. In a letter to Lenya in April of 1925 he wrote: 

“Today I know who you are: You are Alpha and Omega, revelation from above and words of a child, sunrise and dusk of evening. For this is the equation: white is your soul, white is your body. You are everything good. All the beauty of the clouds and the earth is within you, and the abyss, when it possesses you, becomes more heavenly than all the heavens.” 

The first recording session for “Exiled: The extrication of Kurt Weill”. Ken Merrill and I had a blast.