LA FACE CENDREE [The Cindered Face], Mzo, Vc, Pno : Rimbaud
Harold Blumenfeld
About this work:
LA FACE CENDREE - The Cindered Face: Rimbaud's "Aube" [Dawn] and "Being Beauteous" conjoined. [1981] ... Mezzo, cello, piano... Sung in French. Composer's first setting of Rimbaud....
RECORDED Centaur Records CRC 2277, Christine Schadeberg, soprano, Savely Schuster, cello, Seth Carlin, piano....
****REVIEW---
"...highly impressionable settings of Rimbaud's rich imageries. The music is also rich, but dark, romantic and linear. The vocal line conveys the text vividly." -Robert Commanday, San Francisco Chronicle****.......
SOUND BITE: much of "Aube". Sample SCORE PAGES on site.......
>Former Pub. MMB Music, now closed. Published by COMPOSER: blumenf@wustl.edu
Score: $35<<...
This work has had some seventeen performances to date across United States.
COMPOSER'S NOTES---
Rimbaud at his most sensuous, surreal, mysterious. In "Aube" his surreal "running like a beggar across marble piers" evokes Chirico, anticipates Surrealism by half a century.......
And next, his Beauteous Being, - his "Etre de beaute", will end up drawing back and rearing - transforming into a horse.......
"Aube" reflects a boy's hallucinatory awakening to a summer dawn. Partial text----
JE RIS AU WASSERFALL BLOND
QUI S'ECHEVELA A TRAVERS LES SAPINS:---
I laughed at the blond waterfall which fell dishevelled through the pines:
A LA CIME ARGENTEE JE RECONNUS LA DEESSE.---at its silvered summit I recognized the goddess...
JE L'AI ENTOURE AVEC SES VOILES AMASSES,
ET J'AI SENTI UN PEU SON IMMENSE CORPS.---I surrounded her in her mass of veils and I sensed something of her immense body.......
There follows a Cello passage enhanced with magical piano sounds. This returns later, in setting of ensuing "Being Beauteous"......
This second poem must rate as one of greatest works in Western literature. Surreal, polymorphous, its fluid, surprising imagery intertwines the gruesome and ecstatic. It presciently heralds Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Theatre of Cruelty of generations of artists then as yet unborn.......
Here follows text of work's closing - a juxtaposition of a Cindered Face, a Coarse-haired Escutcheon, and Arms of Crystal. [Do we catch this 50 years later in Cocteau's "Orphee"?]:
O LA FACE CENDREE, L'ECUSSON DE CRIN,
LES BRAS DE CRISTAL!
LE CANON SUR LEQUEL JE DOIS M'ABATTRE
A TRAVERS LA MELEE DES ARBRES
ET DE L'AIR LEGER!" ---
Oh the cindered face, the horse-haired escutcheon, the arms of crystal, the canon against which I beat myself, across the tangle of trees and the light air!......
This is a stroke of pure surrealism....
Is Rimbaud's "canon" a double-entendre? - composer has always suspected as much, though no one has joined him in his suspicion.......
All of this comes long before the inter-bellum concoctions of Official Surrealism. It is stronger, more radical than the labors of those latter-day narcissist/publicists with all their impish epatement of the bourgeoisie......
Unknown, unpublished the teen-age Rimbaud had no audience. His work discovered upon his early death, its audiences swelled, spread, ever exploding into the present.......
Now every year a new biography, each month a new study attempting to come to grips with literature's astounding boy genius.......
Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarme were set by Debussy, Ravel. Boulez has done Mallarme and Rene Char, keeping clear of Rimbaud. The youthful Britten's lovely, lyrical "Illuminations" does not penetrate the rude Rimbaldian surface, for they venture not beyond the poet's lyrical moments.......
Here, in FACE CENDREE, along with CARNET DE DAMNE [initial title of "Seasons in Hell"], ANGE DE FLAMME, and especially our largely English-language Rimbaud opera, "SEASONS IN HELL", composer attempts to mobilize sound, now at last, in service of Rimbaud's magical, violent, perplexing lines........
Numerous pages of score can be downloaded from this site, along with music SOUND BITE.......
For the truly RIMBAUD-obsessed, more lines from these two poems:---
"AUBE"--
J'AI EMBRASSE L'AUBE D'ETE.
I have embraced the summer dawn....
RIEN NE BOUGEAIT ENCORE
AU FRONT DES PALAIS. L'EAU ETAIT MORTE.
Nothing yet stirred in front of the palaces. The water was dead....
LES CAMPS D'OMBRES
NE QUITTAIENT PAS LA ROUTE DU BOIS.
Camps of shadows clung to the path in the woods....
J'AI MARCHE, REVEILLANT
LES HALEINES VIVES ET TIEDES,
ET LES PIERRERIES REGARDERENT,
ET LES AILES SE LEVERENT SANS BRUIT.
I walked, waking warm, living gusts of air, and precious stones looked on, and stirring silently, wings lifted....
LA PREMIERE ENTREPRISE FUT,
DANS LE SENTIER DEJA EMPLI
DE FRAIS ET BLEMES ECLATS,
UNE FLEUR QUI ME DIT SON NOM.
The first event, along the path already filled with fresh, pale shimmerings, was a flower which told me its name....
JE RIS AU WASSERFALL BLOND
QUI S'ECHEVELA A TRAVERS LES SAPINS:
I laughed at the blond waterfall which fell dishevelled through the pines:...
A LA CIME ARGENTEE JE RECONNUS LA DEESSE..At its silvered summit I recognized the goddess... ((and the ending lines are already quoted far above.)).......
Connecting "Aube" with "Being Beauteous" there is Bach-derived Cello Interlude in quasi-G-minor. This material will returns at the height of the second setting.......
Here, in "Being Beauteouis", vision of ineffable beauty coalesces, though soon it will turn to gristle: DEVANT UNE NEIGE, UN ETRE DE BEAUTE DE HAUTE TAILLE. Against the snow, a Being of Beauty tall in stature....
DES SIFFLEMENTS DE MORT ET DES CERCLES
DE MUSIQUE SOURDE...Hissings of death and circlings of deaf music...
FONT MONTER, S'ELARGIR ET TREMBLER
COMME UN SPECTRE CE CORPS ADORE;..
make the adored body rise, swell and tremble like a spectre;...
DES BLESSURES ECARLATES ET NOIRES
ECLATENT DANS LES CHAIRS SUPERBES.
Wounds scarlet and black erupt in the superb flesh...LES COULEURS PROPRES DE LA VIE SE FONCENT, DANSENT,
ET SE DEGAGENT AUTOUR DE LA VISION,
SUR LE CHANTIER..The very colors of life deepen, dance and disengage around the coalescent Vision on the pathway.......
and the poem convulsively races on to its strange polymorphous conclusion, its text quoted earlier, above.......
Translations copyright 1981 by composer.
Year composed: 1981
Duration: 00:15:00
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Voice with Chamber/Jazz Ensemble, 2-5 Players
Instrumentation: ,1 Piano soloist(s), ,1 Cello soloist(s), ,1 Mezzo-Soprano soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: Vocal part requires dramatic mezzo or soprano with large range, flexibility, flawless diction.
Between the two "Illuminations" settings - "Aube", "Being Beauteous" - there is passage for cello with piano, redolent of a Bach g-minor sarabande. Towards middle of "Being Beauteous", this material is again sounded behind the voice.
Both Rimbaud poems are precociously surreal. Setting attempts to capture, enhance pervasive magic, otherness.