Southern Exposure

"Mad King" Tweets

About to head out the door to San Antonio for a week of rehearsals with SOLI Chamber Ensemble, leading up to our two performances of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King next Tuesday and Wednesday (May 26 and 27). While our rehearsals are closed to the general public, I thought it might be nice to give you all a little glimpse of the insanity that is this piece before we open next Tuesday night. Throughout the course of these rehearsals, I'll be posting frequent updates (as frequent as possible, anyway) about our progress on this seminal twentieth-century work on my Twitter page: http://twitter.com/brettwmitchell.  Stay tuned, and enjoy!

Fourth Song's the Charm

When I arrived at our first rehearsal in Paris this past Monday for our world premiere of Henri Dutilleux's orchestral song cycle, Le temps l'horloge, I began to hear chatter in the hall about a brand new, freshly composed interlude and fourth song--a potentially panic-inducing proposition for those in a field which prides itself on meticulous preparation. (To be fair, I had heard of this possibility almost a year ago, but when a copy of the score was mailed to me just last month, there were still only three songs.) Sure enough, though, Mr. Dutilleux arrived, and with him this rumored additional music. I got a copy of the new score--unbound, ink still drying--from the orchestra's librarian just before its first notes were played.

As a recovering composer myself, I must confess that there are few things more exciting than being in the room the first time a new work is brought into the world. Hearing the first sonic realization of one's own music is indescribably exciting, but being in the room for the unveiling of the newest work of an unparalleled, 93-year-old master like Henri Dutilleux is a privilege beyond words. As with seemingly every other piece he's written over the last six decades, Le temps l'horloge is, in my opinion, an unqualified masterpiece. Being even a small part of its premiere was a huge honor.

One final note before I share the text Mr. Dutilleux set for this final movement. As recreative artists, we performers tend to view scores as having descended from on high, springing fully formed from the head of Euterpe. While we know intellectually otherwise, it seems inconceivable that there was ever "another" version of the works we know and love. Watching Mr. Dutilleux add, omit, revise, and sometimes do a wholesale rewrite of a passage right before our eyes throughout the rehearsal process this past week was an excellent reminder of the malleability of a work of art in its initial stages. These birth pains--these vulnerable, tentative first steps of a work as it cautiously makes its way into our world--go undetected in a work's final form when crafted by the hands and heart of a master. Great art projects inevitability. Great art conceals its own artifice.

Since I shared the text of the first three movements of this work in a previous entry, I thought I'd share the text of this new, fourth movement here as well. Here is a translation of the text for that final song, "Enivrez-vous". It doesn't have quite the same punch (pun intended) as the original French, but I hope it will suffice for our purposes.

IV. Get Drunk

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness
of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

-Charles Baudelaire

P.S. Mr. Dutilleux was also kind enough to sign my score for his brilliant orchestral work of 1978, Timbres, Espace, Mouvement. His inscription reads "To Mr. Mitchell / With my best wishes / Remembering our first meeting at the first performance of 'Le temps l'horloge' / Henri Dutilleux".