I was at a local concert and hadn't seen the program
beforehand so I was pleasantly surprised to see the
soloist in Berlioz Les nuits d'ete was a friend. I knew
she was a singer but didn't know she did solo work and
I heard later this was the first time she had sung with
an orchestra. I was sitting right at the front and was
only a few feet from her. When she spotted me she gave
me her water bottle to look after which she swigged
from between movements. I'd not heard this piece before
and was ve...(+)
I was at a local concert and hadn't seen the program
beforehand so I was pleasantly surprised to see the
soloist in Berlioz Les nuits d'ete was a friend. I knew
she was a singer but didn't know she did solo work and
I heard later this was the first time she had sung with
an orchestra. I was sitting right at the front and was
only a few feet from her. When she spotted me she gave
me her water bottle to look after which she swigged
from between movements. I'd not heard this piece before
and was very impressed both with the performance and
the composition. (It is only a small amateur orchestra
but they played very well).
When I got home I listened to the Berlioz again with
the score and thought it sounded very advanced for its
time and for being an early opus number. I thought I
could see presaged in it elements that would be well
developed by the great late romantic composers of big
orchestral songs.
About a year previously I'd sketched the opening 90
seconds of a setting of Christina Rossetti's "Remember"
for soprano and string orchestra. At the time this was
for a competition but I was too busy then to spend
enough time on it so I'd put it to one side, much as
I'd liked the opening and had the feeling I should do
something with it eventually.
After hearing the Berlioz I was inspired to pick this
sketch up again, to orchestrate it for the same small
orchestra I'd just heard and to finish it off, which
took just a week to do (in a few evenings) as I felt
quite driven to write this and had a compelling feeling
for how it should go.
I'm familiar with the orchestral songs of Finzi, R.
Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and I feel
there are touches of some of these influences in this
piece. Although the poem is about loss through death it
is also quite life affirming, so I wanted to reflect
that. It starts quite plaintively where the poem asks
the surviving loved one to remember the other when dead
but then later asks not to grieve or to remember if
that causes suffering.
You'll notice the score includes words in italics near
the end for some instrumental parts. This is not for
then to sing but to remind them that the motifs they
are playing at the end are from the "do not grieve"
section (BTW the "do not grieve"section was from a
little sketch I made separately months ago and thought
I must use this in something). I felt including the do
not grieve music within the finishing words "Better by
far you should forget and smile than that you should
remember and be sad" worked within the sense of the
poem to round the music off (and made for some nice
gentle suspensions). Earlier I also I couldn't resist
using the half octave changing direction on the words
"half turn".
Most of my music is pretty light-hearted and I wanted
to try something serious for a change, so this is it.
SHEET MUSIC