#63 the golden weekend

Last Thursday was my college's Annual Day, a sort of coming out party for repressed medical students. The theme of the night was Rendezvous in Paris, and my first reaction was WTF? The hall was decorated magnificently, but everywhere were masks! MASKS?! Totally the wrong theme. I was saying things like 'You can't just paste an Eiffel Tower and suddenly pretend everything's French!' and 'This is a VENETIAN MASQUERADE!'

The night itself was a bore, but it was probably because out of five hours I warmed my seat with my luscious behind - which was wrapped in a delicious black mesh cardigan - four hours were spent watching the same thing, and three hours were spent watching the same people - the same PERSON, in fact - strutting ass on stage. There were some couple of lovely performances: my old Biochem lecturer, who was the tiniest person in campus, who almost passed out on stage from twirling a Bharatanatyam movement; a crazy but totally awesome Kabuki-style show of a Jedi duel; and my juniors' frightening batch cheer, which almost made me giggle in the middle of the hall from sheer testosterone overload.

Other things were nice the first five minutes, then became annoying, then I didn't know what happened because I was out to the loo. Two fashion shows, in which the most original thing was to pair up a handsome boy with er, a handsome lady, clearly a sugar mummy in utero; an ass-long show about contraception - when the funniest thing in the show is supposed to be a jab at your favorite Myanmar person, then it's TROUBLE - and some singing (which featured ZERO French song) which was nice for a couple of minutes then dragged.

Which was my complaint for the show as a whole: it dragged like my ass after a full day of Muar posting. Some of us really need to be hit in the heads with the words 'Less is FUCKING BEST'. I haven't seriously been annoyed at a show since 2002, when my well-meaning teacher brought me to a Malay theatre - got box seats too - and I promptly fell asleep after the actors' third attempt at being dramatic just left me cringing for my bed.

And the food. It was advertised as Western, but the only Western thing on the menu is a drag king pushing his busted face, frilly grey POLKA DOTS shirt and vest while shouting 'Chicken to your left, lamb to your right'. Lamb? So what? I don't even eat the fucking shit anyway, reminded me of my least favourite aunt, who ordered off menus like rich people. I detest rich people, so there. And I understand there's six hundred plus of us to serve, but can waiters at least pretend to be nice? It's a sad thing when the one nice waiter was actually an outside people.

I shouldn't be too hard: clearly a lot of work - but not a lot of thought, hehe - had gone into making the 2012 Melaka-Manipal Medical College (Melaka) Annual Night, Theme: Rendezvous in Frogging Paris. The reason I'm being such a cunt with my hard-working friends is because I won the Poetry award, second place. I fucking wrote the damn thing on New Year's Eve, took about five hours, then another hour to rearrange the words just so the stresses and the rhythm would fall just right (being trained in music does help). I was so happy coming to the event, expecting at least a cert for my hard work, when suddenly cold hard truth pocked me in the ass without lube:

There's only present for the first winner.

I mean, there wasn't even a cert! Fuck that! And the winner was this Indian lady, who I'm sure was sweet and nice et cetera et cetera, but her entry: no. She used the crying clown theme, you know, Pagliaccio shit, and while it was nice to read it dragged. One should be able to encompass an emotion in a single sentence, not went on and on with it like a politician. Unless you're Anne Rice, of course (who looks amazing and has a new book coming out!).

Ah well. I had huge ass fun bitching about everything with my two Kelantanese chaps - and I'm telling you, if you want to be a nasty sounding board you better do it with a Kelantan man, they may be shy at first but their jabs will leave you reeling for days. We all got a five-day long weekend as reward for 'hard' work - hard to watch, hard to sit in, hard to chew, hard to swallow - and I promptly sat down to write Opus 37.

Not really. For the first three days I lazed around - when money's tight the only good thing you can buy is ideas, and I think best when I'm asleep - and did a few homeworks, read my Davidson (that's a huge bible of Medicine) and on 1 a.m. Sunday morning, started writing the recitativo-aria. I've always wanted to write a rage aria, like Elettra's D'Oreste, d'Ajace, or Esclarmonde's Regarde-les, ces yeux purs, you know, the elegant type of rage. I wrote the introductory recitativo in just one hour - I had two Nescafes, don't judge - in the style of Mozart.

I was quite befuddled how to proceed. I love Bellini's cantilena style, and it would accommodate the soprano better, but I also like Verdi's style. To be fair, both are almost interchangeable (especially early Verdi), so I went on and wrote the aria proper. Of course, the second stanza onwards was all purely me, Isyamian writing, if I may call it so, where there's long ass phrases over simple accompaniment, because I want to hear the singer sing the beautiful words which I've written. I also tagged a 'rising rage' figure, a transformed sort of minor scale, which I've used earlier in my Lieder für Eine Dorfschönheit (which currently I'm putting on the back-burner, just one more song to complete the cycle).

The good thing is the highest note in this recitativo-aria is A (there's a B but it's more of a punched type so it can almost be scream-shriek tone, and it comes quite late so the singer's warmed up already) so it's quite commercial. I'm labelling it Gran scena per soprano, but it's really a concert work for female voices who sing comfortably from A4 to F#5, have huge tops and of course, legato for days. The parole is of course moi, it's based on a story I wrote in high school about a princess who was libelled by her ex, sort of Princess Di (whom my mom used to be obsessed about) vs James Hewitt (whom I used to be obsessed about) story. Basically, it says 'Come Judgement Day (or 2012, depending whom you ask), I'll still be ripping you a new one.'

RECITATIVO:
Durjana! pendusta!
Mana Safir*, keris pusaka?
mana Zafir*, lembing berharga?
buat membersih maruah tercela.
Mana kan ku taruh muka,
setelah dihina begitu rupa.

ARIA:
Bertiuplah angin sangkakala,
bergegarlah langit dan angkasa
Menyerakkan bumi dan kejora
mengumpulkan serata manusia.

Tiba hujung masa, hujung dunia fana,
mendengar seruan bergema bertanya:
"Siapa hamba masih berdendam,
mahu menuntut perhutangan?"

Aku kan datang, menapak tangan
meratap, menyumpah, dan meminta
akan melangsaikan hutang
dendam kesumat seribu zaman.

Dalam gelap selepas dunia
Masih kan ku carimu, celaka!
Dengarlah, bumi dan angkasa
Padam dendam dengan darah!

*Safir means 'Grand Ambassador'; Zafir means 'Victorious'. I know, nerdy names for weapons, but whatever. I was also surprised when I found I have to write in taruh, which is basically Brunei (my birth tongue - as I read that again it sounded dirty to my ears, my birth tongue, hehe) for 'to put' or 'to place', for the sake of the melodic and consonant flow.

UPDATE: I have finished the orchestral version of it, the first version of which can be viewed here. The second version is longer by a minute, with additional recitative work and GLORIOUS solos for clarinet and flute. I have also changed the indication, now it's formally a 'concert aria for female voice', because the highest note is B and that note is a good money note for mezzos too.

#62 the enchanted island audio stream review

Daniels vs DiDonato (hint: TEAM SYCORAX!!)

Happy New Year!

First off, the two main characters: Prospero and Sycorax. David Daniels had long been a very important counter--tenor, if not in Europe then in the Americas, so I was prepared to give a leeway. His tone was still gorgeous as long as it remained within his mid-high register; everywhere else and it's a hit-or-miss situation. His coloratura is laboured, and some of his figures were 'spattered'. He attempted large leaps (à la Horne) but these largely failed. His diction is still exemplary among counter-tenors though, and I think his is the only counter-tenor who is able to make his nuances heard at the Met without over-stretching himself.

On the other hand Joyce DiDonato is a pleasure to hear to. Her voice had gained in edge and overdrive which she used effectively in her coloratura, suggesting 'rage' and 'vengeance'. Her diction was the best, followed very closely by Danielle's Ariel, and this considering aria, scene and recitative works. Her over-driven chest voice sounded rather un-Orthodox, even extreme at times, but it was all to serve the drama. THE DRAMA!!



Danielle De Niese' Ariel was at times pleasant to hear. Like the current Daniels, hers is an instrument best enjoyed within certain limits: not too high, not too low, not too fast. When going too high the instrument break out into the infamous 'glare' now well-known to her audiences. When too fast her coloratura becomes smudged and almost illiterate, however that's happily a rare occasion in this outing. Dani's recitative works was also very impressive, she certainly knew how to play with the accents and the rhythm of the speech.

Luca Pisaroni presented a dilemma: a fascinating, rich instrument incapable of movement. His cantabile is wonderful but his passage-work is frankly a mess.

Lisette Oropesa's Miranda was interesting, but lacking in style. Even Dani was at least entrenched in the Handelian mode. I suspect Oropesa may do better in bel canto setting, probably as La sonnambula's Lisa.

Layla Claire's instrument sounds similar to Danielle's, which sometimes confused me because her line is much cleaner! She had a genuine trill, albeit for two seconds only (the best trill of the night belongs to Joyce, in a passage-work no less!).

Anthony Roth Costanzo's Ferdinand suffered from the dread wooble. What is happening with today's counter-tenors? Maybe it's the 'prima' nerves, but it's sad because it's a very beautiful instrument.

The lovers' quartet (tenor Paul Appleby as Demetrius, soprano Layla Claire as Helena, baritone Elliot Madore as Lysander, and especially mezzo Elizabeth DeShong as Hermia) was amusingly enchanting. Their entrance quartet was wonderful, though later another quartet suffers from 'over-Romanticism' i.e. too much vibrato for Baroque voicing. Elizabeth DeShong's Hermia was especially impressive: she was given Dejanira's mad scene from Handel's Hercules, and there she was singing, with Joyce DiDonato, the premier exponent of Dejanira, in the wings, and she kicked the ball out of the park! Mr. Madore's baritone was gorgeous, and his passage-work while maintaining the theme of 'male singers can't do runs' was cleaner than Pisaroni. I cannot be cruel to someone named Appleby, but I don't need to because Mr. Appleby was amazing! His messa di voce was quite wondrous.

And Domingo. I had a suspicion there's a clause somewhere in his contract saying "No A's or above". His was the richest timbre of the cast, I'd give him that, and what he lacked in style he certainly made up with tons and tons of morbidezza and sheer balls.

William Christie's conducting, more at home in Baroque music, was wonderful, keeping up to pace in the virtuosic parts while maintaining an airy souciance at slower and mid-tempo sections. I had a theory that the Met plays better Baroque when the tempo is slower, because at allegro or faster the runs and figures sounded robotic and bloodless. It's really hard to explain but I think it's because at slower tempi when the strings are allowed to sing, the orchestra really comes to its own. The chorus was magnificent, tons better than the Bolena run definitely. The ballet-masque music, adapted from Rameau, was wonderful, especially the strings and the bassoons - just delicious. Generally the music is better when it's adapted from Handel, as compared to perhaps Vivaldi. Rameau's genius was his ballet pieces just sounded good no matter if the orchestra is not really a ballet-oriented orchestra.

The English libretto was quite good, though at times I do wish they'd stick with the Shakespearean mentality instead of giving quasi-street parlance vibes. Case in point: Prospero's "To save my girl from heartbreak", can't they substitute "girl" with "daughter", just divide the beat into a dotted eighth and a sixteenth. Ah well.

All in all, 4.25 out of 5. A well-deserved turn for Baroque music at the greatest opera house of the world, at last.

#61 the elisabeth schwarzkopf collection (part 2)

22 Wolf Lieder (1953)

***

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sings Operetta (1959)

***

The Very Best of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (2009)

*Please comment if links are inaccessible, will re-upload.

*Part 1 is here.

#60 The Unknown Kurt Weill - Teresa Stratas

Teresa Stratas (soprano)

01 Meine Herren, mit siebzehn Jahren (Nannaslied)
02 Complainte de la Seine
03 Ich sitze da un' esse Klops (Klopslied)
04 Berlin im Licht
05 Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?
06 Die Muschel von Margate
07 Wie lange noch?
08 Youkali
09 Der Abschiedbrief
10 Es Regnet
11 Buddy on the Nightshift
12 Schickelgruber
13 Je ne t'aime pas
14 Lied von den braunen Inseln

AMAZON
DOWNLOAD (mediafire)
* with cover picture

#59 Hugues Cuénod Chante Debussy - Hugues Cuénod

Hugues Cuénod (tenor)
Martin Isepp (piano)

01 Le balcon BAUDELAIRE
02 Harmonie du soir BAUDELAIRE
03 Le jet d'eau BAUDELAIRE
04 Recuieillement BAUDELAIRE
05 La mort des amants BAUDELAIRE
06 Nuit d'étoiles DE BANVILLE
07 Fleur des blés GIROD
08 Romance BOURGET
09 Dans le jardin JEULIN
10 Les angélus LE ROY
11 L'ombre des arbres VERLAINE
12 Mandoline VERLAINE
13 Le son du cor safflige vers les bois VERLAINE
14 L'échelonnement des haies VERLAINE
15 Soupir MALLARMÉ
16 Placet futile MALLARMÉ
17 Éventail MALLARMÉ

AMAZON
DOWNLOAD (mediafire)
* with cover picture and embedded lyrics.

#58 thoughts on "l'âme evaporée"

L'âme évaporée et souffrante,
L'âme douce, l'âme odorante des lys divins 
que j'ai cueillis dans le jardin de ta pensée,
Où donc les vents l'ont-ils chassée,
Cette âme adorable des lys?


N'est-il plus un parfum qui reste
De la suavité céleste,
Des jours où tu m'enveloppais
d'une vapeur surnaturelle
faite d'espoir, d'amour fidèle,
de béatitude et de paix?...

The soul, wafting, suffering,
sweet and scented of divine lilies
which I picked from your bountiful garden.
To where then the winds have taken chase
of this beautiful lily's soul?

Is there any more perfume
of the divine tenderness,
of days when you'd cover me
in a supernatural veil
made of hope, of loyal love
of happiness and of peace?

***

"L'âme evaporée", or known by its poem's title "Romance", is part of Debussy's "2 Romances". It's a perennial favourite for recitals due to its beautiful arching lines, a medium range (D3-F#4 with an optional G#4) and its beautiful parole, set from Paul Bourget's poem. I have taken the liberty of re-arranging the lines and the words somewhat so that it made more sense to be read as prose. The translation is entirely mine, and I have also freely translated some phrases, e.g. le jardin de ta pensée as 'your bountiful garden', vapeur surnaturelle as 'supernatural veil'.

What do I look for in this song? Well, some of the things are fairly obvious from the score. Romance is one of those songs you could imagine how it should sound from looking at the score alone. L'âme douce should be sung with extreme tenderness, which is hard because it is a short stand-alone phrase. Onwards are a few phrases which require little, excepting an ascent to F#; here Debussy sets it on an i vowel and allows a crescendo, so this should help, but one should remember the climax of the crescendo is on jardin and not on cueillis. Où donc les vents l'ont-ils chassée should be sung with each note detached but equal, in the same way Cette âme adorable des lys should be sung legato. The arching phrases onwards should be sculpted to suggest wistfulness; special attention is to be given to d'une vapeur surnaturelle as the top note of this phrase (E or G#) should be sung dolce, as if in remembrance of a lover's embrace. One should not pour out the full voice for faite d'espoir, d'amour fidèle because to do so will break the structure of the parole; one only need to read the original poetry to see that this phrase and the phrase before it should be connected. Debussy knew this: hence the mf marking as opposed to a full-out f. The last phrase, de béatitude et de paix should be tapered delicately, using mezza voce for de paix, surely peace should be suggested by a beautiful half-voice in piano.

Frances Alda, a contemporary of Nellie Melba, offers a rendition accompanied with an orchestra. Her take on the song is quite passionate, as befitting a soprano who sang against Caruso. Her treatment of the line Cette âme adorable des lys? is especially interesting, her portamento turning the phrase into a musical equivalent of Arc de Triomphe. She also used a similar ornament each time the phrase ends on the dominant from a higher note. She took the higher oppure in d'une vapeur surnaturelle, however she had to break the legato line in order to procure the top G#, which she held (which I do not condone in this music). Overall I find the heavy vibrato often emulates veristic singing which of course is the wrong approach in this music; however this may also be a problem with the recording technology.



Nellie Melba's voice sometimes confuses me. Her timbre, especially its lower register, is similar to Luisa Tetrazzini, but its mid-high and high register has a beautiful purity which is unique to her. It is interesting to compare her rendition to Alda's: Melba also applies the portamento like Alda, but not to the same extreme. She also took the higher oppure; while she also took a breath before surnaturelle her legato is more intact, on the other hand her G# was quite precarious and strained. Her take of the final two phrases (de béatitude | et de paix?) uses a form of voce bianca, perhaps she wishes to suggest wistfulness but I suspect its ability to project in a hall. I find Melba's version more congenial compared to Alda's, as she is more successful in conveying the mood of the piece.



Hugues Cuénod's rendition of the song appeared in an LP of Debussy songs produced in 1972. Hearing it one can hear the qualities which made Cuénod such a cult favourite: his timbre, which I could only describe as 'intense ardour', his immaculate French, and his thoughtful phrasing. Notice how he pauses on the first L'âme and his treatment of the phrases Des jours où tu m'enveloppais | d'une vapeur surnaturelle using one breath but clearly indicating where each phrase ends. There are issues, obviously: above E his intonation is suspect, and some of his descending phrases are quite blanche in comparison to others, for example L'âme douce. In my opinion Cuénod's interpretation is the most successful, as he managed to transmit the wistful longing in the poem in his singing; he did it very simply, by tapering off the extreme end of his phrases into a fil di voce, basically singing a mini-diminuendo every time.

Christopher Maltman sang this song as part of an all-Debussy recital CD in 2001. As a baritone, Maltman offers a different perspective. His phrasing is heavy, ponderous. His treatment of Où donc les vents l'ont-ils chassée is confusing: the score marks are tenuto, but he sang it in an asymmetrical way, stressing vent and rushing through l'ont-ils chassée. Perhaps he wished to mimic a gust, as his phrasing is quite suggestive of something billowing in the wind. Surprisingly he took the higher oppure, using voix-mixte to reach G#. I approve this choice as the setting is art song as opposed to an aria. As a baritone the natural richness of the voice helps in faite d'espoir, d'amour fidèle, but I find that the ponderous phrasing often gets in the way of the interpretation.



Sandrine Piau, a renowned French soprano specialising in Baroque and Mozart, sang Romance in a recital of Romantic French art songs released in 2006. Her voice is a slender lyric with a beautiful purity and homogeneity between the registers. I find her rendition a bit rushed tempo-wise. Her Des jours où tu m'enveloppais is very beautiful, which baffled me as to why her L'âme douce is so bland in comparison when both phrases begin with the same notes. I find her treatment of long phrases more successful than short phrases. Her take of the higher oppure to be least successful even in comparison to Altman's, because her high G# while being very secure, sounds to me like it suddenly appeared out of nowhere instead of being part of a phrase. It is interesting to note that Piau is able to convey the song's mood by her sheer timbre, which is quite suggestive of a young girl or even a boy-soprano with its purity and clean lines.

Philippe Jaroussky, the superstar French countertenor, released an album of French Romantic songs in 2006 to both uproar and admiration. He sang Romance a third lower than written. His diction is the best among the singers compiled here, but one may argue that such a small timbre may allow a greater oral space for diction than would a larger voice. His phrasing is exemplary and at points similar to Cuénod, for example the phrase Que j'ai cueillis dans le jardin. I don't know why but I find his vapeur surnaturelle to be extremely arousing. That said, his Faite d'espoir, d'amour fidèle is quite swamped by the piano, a case of the singer doing right and the pianist doing the opposite.

#57 elephant elbows, and other stuffs

Tragic, I know. (This is not MY elbow, just for illustrative purposes)

• My elbows are looking like hell! Looking on the internet, the remedies offered include: olive oil, cooking butter, a mixture of baking soda and lemon juice (???), loofah scrubbing, and professional advice. There's some nice tips here. My method: Enchanteur lotion. I've always used this shit, my grandma loves it, and when I was in high school and being a big-ass Francophone any product with a remotely French-sounding brand name was IN. When lunch money was tight (and it's always tight in boarding schools) I used to improvise and use this lotion as hair cream. It leaves your hair smelling real nice all day and boys keep looking back when you're going past them. Well it was definitely better than one of my friends who used his shampoo as Brylcreem, right to this day he can't grow more than 3 inches of (head) hair! Back to my elbows, they're looking marginally better than last week, when they looked like cities were built and razed down on them. I'm just going to scrub 'em harder with my loofah - but they hooort so maach!!
• I've just finished orchestrating the fifth lied from my song cycle. I love the English horn so much I gave it a solo cadenza. On the other hand the score really looked like I was neglecting the clarinets (compared to the other lieder I've already composed), but ah well. The lyrics are quite raunchy: there's references to bunian people, Malay version of sirens, and coming to death naked, which is basically true, right?

"Datanglah, wahai hati yang duka

Hati muda gundah gerhana

Hati yang tidak disinar suria

Hati yang sunyi tanpa gembira, tak gembira.

Hati sayu berseorangan

di gelap malam bermuraman

diteman bulan dan sepuluh bintang,

tujuh ratus saka bunian.

Hai manusia! hujungmu 'dah hampir

seribu nafas 'dah kau hembus.

Hai manusia! akalmu jahil,

badanmu fana bagaikan kabus.

Datanglah, anak kecil manusia,

datanglah padaku dengan segera

dengan telanjang dari segala peristiwa

duduklah denganku di sisiku selama-lamanya."

Come, Blackheart

The restless youth

in sunless eclipse,

O unhappy heart!

Lonely heart,

sulking in darkness,

with the moon and ten stars

and seven hundred sirens' curses.

Man-child! your end is nigh

your thousand breaths are spent.

Man-child! you are naive,

your body melts like the mist.

Come, Man-child,

come to me now,

naked from your sins,

come and sit with me forever.

© fUGA arts limited 2011

• Last Friday I concluded my ENT posting (that's Ear, Nose and Throat or Otolaryngology for you prudes) with a bang. I got a question about nasal mass and a test to confirm whether it's a polyp or a hypertrophied inferior turbinate (basically a 'roided up nose verandah) and I said "proding test" (it was actually "probing test"). Apart from that it went well. Right now I'm supposed to be writing up case reports for the posting but hey, I'm allowed a rest from time to time! My next posting is Ophthalmology. I wasn't a good Ophthal student (wasn't good at ENT either, but at least I really like looking down people's throats, maybe it's the singer in me), but I'll try hard. BANZAI!!

• The 2010 Grammy nominations are out! On the classical front, I'm rooting for Fab Fabio's Ercole su'l Termodonte for Opera Recording (although a Billy Budd win would be nice, too) and Diva/Divo (Joyce DiDonato!!!) for Solo Vocal Performance. The Ercole should win for Beloved Vivica's performances alone: her Con aspetto lusinghiero was dangerously sultry, and her Scenderò, volerò, griderò could probably replace surgery to cure tongue-tie; but this precious (on musicological terms, seeing as it was a scholarly reconstruction of the score) recording also has DiDonato, Damrau, Beloved Jaroussky (!!!!!!), Ciofi and Lehtipuu. Villazón is a known quantity (translation: meh!) and I've sadly no other information about Miss Romina Basso, but she was at least effective. Oh, I'm looking forward to this already! (And the Academy's chance to correct their decision over snubbing Beloved Vivica's Vivaldi album last year, what a fiasco!) Good luck everyone!!