VOYAGES AFTER HART CRANE, Cycle For Baritone, Ensemble
Harold Blumenfeld
About this work:
VOYAGES After HART CRANE: Verbatim setting of Hart Crane homoerotic "Voyages" cycle. Transcendent, eruptive poetry set for exceptional baritone and guitarist, with viola, two percussion...
Poetic texts of Cycle are best read along while listening to SOUND BITES from Albany recording, herewith provided below...
Albany Records TROY 443 with Patrick Mason, baritone, David Starobin, guitar, NY Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, conductor...
Pub MMB Music Inc: info@mmbmusic.com
Full score: $80.
****REVIEW:
"'Voyages' gives musical life to a set of emotiionally turbulent seascapes by Hart Crane. Two superb baritones are at work here, and the supporting instrumentalists are top flight. Albany wraps it up with fine sound and interesting notes." - Greenfield, American Record Guide....
Crane's "Voyages" is an all-embracing Odyssey of homoerotic love, from initiation through to consummation, cooling, sterility, and ultimate transmutation of experience into Crane's magnificently "Imaged Word"...
Guide to Sound Bite #1:
...from POEM THREE, center of cycle. Solo viola conveys 'Voice of Lover'...
-- Intro: viola, guitar, percussion. Then baritone: "Infinite consanguinity it bears, this tendered theme of you
that light retrieves from sea plains
where the sky resigns a breast
that every wave enthrones;
While ribboned water lanes I wind
are laved and scattered with no stroke wide from your side, whereto this hour the sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.
And so, admitted through black
swollen gates that must arrest
all distance otherwise, -
Past whirling pillars
and lithe pediments,
Light wrestling there incessantly
with light, Star kissing star
through wave on wave
unto your body rocking!...
and where death, if shed,
presumes no carnage,
but this single change, -
Upon the steep floor
flung from dawn to dawn, the Silken Skilled Transmemberment of Song;
Permit me voyage, love,
into your hands."...
[This first bite, from central core of cycle, has conveyed the unbridled culmination of love affair. Contains some of wildest, most supercharged erotic language, imagery in literature.
In the musical setting, viola represents Voice of Lover. Guitar is given passages of force and fury.]...
Guide to Sound Bite #2,
from POEM VI, final transcendent setting of cycle. The following Bite Text starts with fifth strophe of Crane's poem. Music opens with marine explosion from which will emerge haunting Botticellian image of Prosperpina on her seashell... Then, the baritone:
"Beyond siroccos harvesting the soltice thunders, crept away, like a cliff swinging or a sail flung into April's inmost day - Creations's blithe and petalled word to the lounged goddess when she rose conceding dialogue with eyes that smile unsearchable repose...
Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
Unfolded floating dais before which rainbows twine continual hair..."
---The poem shortly concludes with some of most sublime lines set to paper---
"Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!
The imaged Word, it is, that holds hushed willows anchored in its glow.
It is the unbetrayable reply whose accent no farewell can know."...
The full fury and passion of these lines is matched only in Rimbaud, whose work Hart Crane knew and revered.
Guide to Score Pages from POEM III, downloadable on this site:.....
[1] Chart showing layout of instruments.
[2] Score, viola intro, with guitar
[3,4,5] Score for text, "Infinite consanguinity it bears" [through to] "The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands."
Year composed: 1977
Duration: 00:35:09
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Voice with Chamber/Jazz Ensemble, 2-5 Players
Instrumentation: ,2 Percussion (General) soloist(s), ,1 Viola soloist(s), ,1 Guitar (Classical/Acoustic) soloist(s), ,1 Baritone soloist(s)
Instrumentation notes: Complete settings of five of the six poems of Hart Crane's monumental VOYAGES, an argosy of homoerotic passion.
Lengthy, demanding setting requiring vocal, guitar, instrumental virtuosi. Viola represents Voice of Lover. Guitar virtuosity often stretched to limits.
Intricate percussion parts.
Singer must have the sensibility of a Poet. Baritone, Pat Mason, singing in Sound Bites and on complete Albany Records recording, gives sensitive, powerful performance.
Recorded NYC by Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg cond, Pat Mason, baritone, David Starobin, guitar, 2 percussionists on 28 instruments including timpani. Albany Records TROY 443.