kagablog

for tenor, horn and piano (2004)
Out of town premiere

The Well
Blue
Self-Knowledge
Poetry (horn tacet)
Ownership
Reduction (piano tacet)
Envoi

I first met Don Maclennan during a short stay in Grahamstown in August 1997, when I was visiting composer in the Department of Music at Rhodes University. The first book of his poetry I encountered was Solstice: it was launched a few months after my visit and Christine Lucia sent me a copy in London. I was struck by the spareness of the writing complemented by the richness of thought that lay behind it. Although as a composer one is always looking for verse that might be set, I realized at once that I could never ‘set’ this poetry; it was definitely in no need of a composer’s hand. When Musa Nkuna requested a work some years later, it was nevertheless to Don Maclennan’s poetry that I turned, and from Solstice that I eventually chose seven poems that I loved most. My concern was providing a setting for the poems rather than ‘setting’ words, and as by now I had a composition called Tenor and String Quartet – a wordless piece also written for Nkuna – under my belt, I took the opportunity to plunder it, and so The Well, Ownership, and Envoi have their musical origins in this work. I added words to this existing music with little adaptation, a process that does not draw attention to the cadence of words in the way earlier composers have done but allows the words to speak for themselves. Self-Knowledge quotes some phrases from the 2nd movement of my String Quartet No 1. (Don was at the premiere in Grahamstown and told me afterwards how the 2nd movement had worked for him, while the first hadn’t.) Poetry revisits a tenor aria from the first scene of my opera Searching for Salome. Reduction is indeed a reduction: the piano takes a break and we have a duet for tenor and horn, with the vocal line based on a uhadi bow song and the horn standing in for the uhadi bow. Blue came ‘out of the blue’ and, unusually, only uses the 1st verse of the poem. There are few classical models for horn, voice and instruments: Schubert’s Auf dem Strom is the most significant; but Britten’s Serenade takes the medium into a new realm. I studied them both very closely as I worked on mine, and gave the horn an important role both in duet with the voice and as a soloist, in much the same way Britten did. After pausing for breath in the fourth song, the horn launches into what is effectively a mini horn concerto, with occasional lines from the voice; and in the final song, the horn again has a considerable solo role. The final ordering of songs was dictated by musical structure rather than poetic narrative. It is my journey through the book, pausing at certain points to reflect musically on particular poems. I must have been struck by the way they are about music, poetry, or the artist.

Solstice: Seven Poems of Don Maclennan was composed between January and August 2004 in Johannesburg. It was commissioned by SAMRO Endowment for the National Arts for Nkuna and Trio Capricorn of Cologne and is dedicated to Don Maclennan and Musa Nkuna. The poems are taken from Maclennan’s Solstice, published in 1997 by Snailpress in association with Scottish Cultural Press, and used with the permission of the poet. The premiere will be given on 15.8.08 in Pretoria. (MB)

1. The Well

I listened to a tape, / an interview with a now dead poet / speaking from the grave / in that accent I always thought a joke. / “The well is dry,” he croaked. / Then last night I dreamed / that he and I were walking / the slopes of a gentle hill. / A swarm of bees enclosed us, / miraculously leaving us unstung. / “Button up your shirt,” I yelled / as they swarmed again. / They were not bees / but feathery yellow seeds / filling the hillside / with a strange hissing sound. / The well is never dry. / Water bubbled out / between the harsh stones / of his voice.

2. Blue

I am obsessed with blue – / the sky, the door, the window frame / I painted hoping it would fly. / My friend’s father taught her / only to draw in blue: / that way you drew / with the sky itself. / You can see why.

3. Self Knowledge

Love in a narrow bed / above the harbour, / the lamp still burning / when the first light wind / stirs the curtain, / and a book kept open / with a wine glass demonstrates / without false rhetoric / that we live in paradise.

4. Poetry

In innocence I groomed myself, / learned carefully by heart / the rich lines of the prodigals. / Then poetry found me out, / tapped at midnight on my window / to see if I could shine like a rainbow / or roar like a church organ. / It was not what I’d expected / of an enterprise / everyone so admired: / I was reminded that / I’m just an animal / who cooks his food, / makes promises, laughs, / lies, and knows / he is going to die.

5. Ownership

How could I own / the sunlight on this grass, / viridian brilliance, / or the generosity of winter sun / thawing my bones at noon? / It gives unstintingly / as the love of women, / of children full of growing / into self-assurance, openness, / or the harvest books / are brimming with.

6. Reduction

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus ends / where it begins, warning: / of that of which we cannot speak / we should be silent. /
What else is there to speak about / but the unspeakable? / In spite of warnings to define our terms / nobody can define
what matters. / Why art aspires / to the condition of music / we cannot say. / Try to explain / the Mozart aria that drifts /
into the spring garden; / why love transforms biology; / why literature’s an elixir; / or how inertness / miraculously
contrives / to be warm flesh. / Reality and words / part company there.

7. Envoi

I: I have become secretive / as an old tree, ring on ring / with deeply hidden sap. / I struggle to make fruit, / but something is slowly / eating out my heart.
II: Fossil music? Frozen music? / Can it be thawed out / and heard again? / Are your hands warm enough? / Are mine?