To be sung without bombast
Exploring how the stories we hear all
around us can give a fresh insight on song repertoire. Or, how a day trip to Brighton helped uncover
the character of the narrator in Finzi's, It was a lover and his lass.
Stories
are everywhere, helping us to make sense of our world. Each day, when travelling on the train, the bus,
or seeking quiet refuge in a coffee shop, the threads of people's lives weave
around me. As people share their stories
with family, friends and strangers, I hear the drone of despair, the fanfare of
hope and the nervous staccato of trials and tribulations. This is why I love Shakespeare: He is able
to capture the melody and rhythm of people's lives in a way that gets to the
heart of their humanity.
Because
stories are living, breathing things, it's one of the reasons why I do a lot of
my interpretative thinking about song and opera in places where I am surrounded
by people. The everyday and not so everyday situations that animate our lives
offers fresh inspiration and with it, a contemporary insight on a score.
Sandcastles and song
Right
now, I'm working on Finzi's, setting of Shakespeare's It was a lover and his lass.
Because of this I've taken myself off to Brighton for the day: To
understand a song based in pastoral comedy, it seems I need to leave the city and head for somewhere more laid
back. Admittedly, Brighton is more
seaside than cornfield, but the freedom of its ocean along with its care free
attitude guarantees a salacious atmosphere in the summer months.
But
before I explore how the environment of Brighton can give a fresh
perspective on the score, I first need to look at Shakespeare's lyrics to
understand how Finzi re-interpreted them, and consider how that re-interpretation
might resonate with us today.
Passion and puns
Finzi's
setting stays faithful to Shakespeare's original intention. The syncopated piano chords capture the throb
of expectation, the arching melodies and strident intervals of spring-time and
ring-time are winks of desire, and the driving heat of lust is very evident in
the clambering climax of the final verse.
Finzi's It was a lover and his
lass is by no means a polite version of Shakespeare's pastoral romp to
appease middle class sensibilities. It
is a bold interpretation about one of the elements that makes up the cycle of
life.
Sex, truth and lies
Because
of this, the truth and emotional drive of the song needs bold choices and a
high energy grounded in the narrator's intention and character. Without this grounding, the song can quickly
become untruthful, disconnecting the singer from song and audience. Poulenc, in his notes to
singers, called this type of approach 'bombast'. Indeed he requested that his songs were to be
sung "without bombast" and implored singers "not to sing if you
do not believe in it." If the joyful, energetic truth of Finzi's song is
to be conveyed, we can take inspiration from Poulenc's words and find out what
the values of the song are and why we believe in them. One way we can discover this is to understand
why the narrator tells the story of the lover and his lass. For a good set of
questions that will help build character and explore character objectives, go
here.
Another way is to look at the song's subtext to see what isn't being
sung or said. And this is where Brighton
comes in very useful because it is littered with voluptuous tales of hen and
stag misadventures.
As I
snuggled into my deckchair, all around me hens and stags retold their 'nudge,
nudge, wink, wink' tales. I noticed that when the
really salacious bits were being shared, energy fizzed like an alka-seltzer
spurting to life in a glass of water. This
in itself started to help me uncover something about the mindset and purpose of
the song's narrator because a couple of things consistently happened:
•
the narrator and the group re-lived the memory to the point that the
story was like a time machine, taking them back to that place, that time, that drink, that encounter
•
the story validated their stag or hen identity
•
it reconnected them to the purpose of their weekend
• it
brought the group together by sharing a collective knowledge and experience
• the
narrator became the tour guide of the story.
The
more I heard these tales, the more I wondered which misadventures wouldn't be
re-told when they arrived home, or which details would be conveniently left
out. This filtering of stories is done
for a reason: Find the motivation, you'll find the values and the truth. So I
started to ask myself, what isn't the narrator sharing about this couple in It was a lover and his lass...? And with this question, we dive into the
subtext of the song.
Truth,
like time, is elastic. When searching for the truth in a song we can scrabble
between the bar lines - looking for contradictions between melody, harmony and
text - to find the gap where the character's attitude exists. Or we can look beyond melody and harmonic
shifts to consider the role of the rest by asking what isn't being said in that
moment? We can also look for double meanings to find the humour and values, be
that sardonic, sarcastic or salacious.
References:
Francis
Poulenc; Journal de mes Mélodies; Kahn & Averill, 2006
Gerald
Finzi; Let us garlands bring; five Shakespeare songs for voice and piano; Boosey and Hawkes
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