Poul Ruders: Tycho: Opera: Score

Opera-Poul Ruders' opera Tycho in 3 Acts was premiered May 15 1987 by Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and Kaare Hansen (conductor) at Helsingør Theater in Aarhus Denmark. Libretto in Danish by Henrik Bjelke. Full score: WH31457 Synopsis: In 1597 the famous Danish astronomer and astrologist the nobleman Tycho Brahe flees his castle cum observatory Uraniburg on one of the small islands off the Danish coast. The newly coronated King Christian the Fourth has a grudge against Tycho who in 1572 discovered a new star Stella Nova by using his naked eye only; the telescopewasn’t invented yet. This discovery gained Tycho tremendous fame among his contemporaries within the European scientific circles. The now weakened and embittered old man moves together with his wife Christina whom he raped when she was an adolescent and Jeppe the Dwarf his fool-servant whose life Tycho once saved to the plague-infested city of Prague. There at the Benatky Castle Tycho encounters the main reason for his departure from Denmark: the young German mathematician Johannes Kepler the only scientist among his contemporaries Tycho acknowledges - Tycho is in severe need of intelligent challenge. Which he gets and with a disastrous result for himself. The encouraging encounter with Kepler turns into Tycho's scientific and earthly death verdict. Slowly Tycho realizes that his own conception of the Earth as the indisputable axes of the Universe is shattered by Kepler s theory about Earth encircling the stationary Sun. The ancient picture of the Universe collapses Tycho feels deceived by Kepler who leaves the castle shaken by Tycho's wrath. But they meet again and reunite in a Romanza a Due at Tycho’s death bed. The opera hovers above immense sadness and extreme ridicule - the cast is most peculiar indeed - so in many ways 'TYCHO' may be described at the best as a 'Tragic Operetta'

Poul Ruders' Star Prelude And Love Fugue is a work for Piano solo dating from 1990. Programme note Star Prelude and Love Fugue is the fruit of “a wonderful stay in Tokyo in March 1988” (the composer’s words). The two pieces were composed in February 1990 and they are dedicated to Japanese pianist Aki Takahashi who gave the premiere performance at the Lerchenborg Musikdage on 3 August 1990. The prelude is a fantasia on the prelude of Act Two of Poul Ruders’ opera Tycho (1986) about Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (which should explain the title). The theme of the  Love Fugueistaken from the opening bars of another earlier Ruders’ work namely the a cappella motet Charitas Nunquam Excidit (which is Latin for “love never ceases”). The following fugue is purged of the genre’s traditional gravitas as is already signalled by the expression mark 'Swinging'. Its initial eleven bars quote the motet but there after everything is newly composed. Per Erland Rasmussen 2001