The Mirecourt Trio Commissions
Ex
Profundis...
The Orangethorpe Aria
for Soprano, Clarinet,
and Piano Trio
(1977)
James Drew
The overpowering sense of spiritual loss that characterizes much of the philosophy of the twentieth century, the seeds of which are evident since the end of the Renaissance, has been described by metaphor as reflecting a wasteland. The reality of Eliot’s dark implications has never been as vulgarly gnawing as it is today. With the great rebellion against the Victorian Age, led by Nietzsche, Freud, and Karl Marx, the break with the past—and spiritual stability—was almost complete, and the dominant tradition of the western world was repudiated. After God was assumed to be dead and no one any longer seemed to be in control, the new twentieth century, with the bang of World War I, was well on its way to what was soon to be a series of disastrous human errors. Certainly it is common for both individuals and nations to engage in competitive rhetoric of a political or artistic nature, but the breakdown, instead of the strengthening, of values that occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an age of spiritual disinheritance, was a collapse characterized by a kind of tittering hysteria.
In the Arts, the most serious symptoms of this decay at the beginning of the century can be observed in the birth of the Dada Movement in Paris to whose followers the loss of the past seemed to have rendered the present, as well as the future, utterly meaningless and often curiously humorous. Fright has an enormous advantage in the decaying process. The effect of that philosophical point of view has, of course, taken on various forms ever since and has been responsible for the subsequent attempts (many successful) at leveling all values. But, to confuse matters even further, the same general philosophy somehow managed to be understood, by many, as representing a “modern” point of view and, therefore, sowing the seeds that equate “modern” with the idea of “meaningless.” The modernness of Monteverdi was not based upon meaninglessness, nor are the black paintings of Ad Reinhardt “meaningless.” Meaningless needs no explanation, but the term “modern” is another matter. Modern is anything that makes us feel new or renewed. To the artist the need of a “new” approach to his material, whether technical, conceptual, or philosophical (many times all three), is inextricably bound to the demands of the subject matter with which he is working, regardless of style or language. Meaninglessness is abstractly sad. As Eliot pointed out, “I can make nothing with nothing.” Art, however, is dangerous—dangerous because if its subject matter is crucial, it will reflect a doctrine of moral values and therefore will pose a threat to other ideologies. The moral and ethical battle in Art continues. The existential crisis, to quote Lloyd Rodgers, is yours.
James
Drew
1978
In his essay on Coleridge (1866), Walter Pater states that “modern thought is distinguished from ancient by its cultivation of the ‘relative spirit’ in place of the ‘absolute.’” However, Stephen Spender rightly argues that “the modern finds its character by confronting the past and including this confrontation within itself.” An examination of history proves the point conclusively. The renewal process of which Spender has spoken began to take shape in the United States for the first time during the early part of the twentieth century when Charles Ives created a new “American” idea of composition that embraced past music traditions, including both domestic and European. The great diversity of materials used by Ives (classical and popular) is of immense importance in view of the conceptual influence that he has had on at least a few other American composers some sixty years later. Thus, the second stage of this development fathered by Ives did not manifest itself until the middle of the 1960's, at which time composer George Rochberg reassessed the capacity of tonal music, history, and the twentieth century to express his musical thought; and by the late sixties, James Drew, also working independently of “school,” expanded the principle of renewal through history into still another uniquely personal style. Drew emphasized the importance of the past when he stated that “...the concept of history as a means to illuminate and express an artistic statement is not a new idea, but is important, however, in that it allows an artist the opportunity to create a work within a significantly larger frame of reference and thus supplies the context for a potentially deeper, more far-reaching kind of ‘meaning’ that can only be achieved by historical comparison. In other words, the quality of one’s work must be measured, under these circumstances, against the masterworks of the past as well as those of the present. History, because of its remoteness, is an abstraction, and an abstraction is, after all, another form of elaboration.”
Only a handful of innovative individuals during our present era have waged a private war against the affliction of spiritual loss; American painters Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman quickly come to mind; Stravinsky, Rochberg, Maxwell Davies in England, and most certainly Olivier Messiaen. But perhaps no one today has been more imaginative and direct in articulating spiritual values in an art work than James Drew, whom Nicolas Slonimsky calls “an authentic American original.”
James Drew’s Orangethorpe Aria was composed in 1977, and is dedicated to Georgia Yelland Nelson, Assistant Dean at Yale College and wife of Philip F. Nelson, Dean of the School of Music at Yale University. The work received its world premiere on December 12, 1978, in Herrick Chapel at Grinnell College, with soprano Leslie Morgan, the Mirecourt Trio, and clarinetist Russell Harlow—all of whom, according to the composer, “not only give my works their finest performances, but actually ‘live’ my music. I have the greatest respect and love for them all.”
The text (by the composer) of the Orangethorpe is fundamentally concerned with the human experience, with all of its failings, disillusionments, hopes, and dreams. The “innocents” refer to those persons we encounter in life who suffer because of the deterioration of values that surround them; their naiveté is a kind of pureness of heart. The “slightly tarnished” eluded to in the text is more complicated. Through lessons learned, many times the hard way, they begin all over again in order to do better (the “luna petite” is used as a poetic reversal of sorts). There is a great deal of the use of words, employed side by side, that have opposite meanings (“a dark light,” “no truth tis true”) as well as phonetic constructions that contain such words as “loud” and “laudi.” In the composer’s words, “all things are possible through God—and that includes Heaven.” In Nomine.
The Aria stands as still another step in the composer’s development of tonal composition and is both a logical extension from, and a bridge to, an earlier group of works that began in 1974, with the stage production Crucifixus Domini Christi. The Orangethorpe, like most of Drew’s recent works, continues to be preoccupied with certain spiritual values and religious conflicts that have, in the words of writer Maxwell Bennett, “a kind of spooky medieval quality.”
The formal construction of the Aria is divided into three parts (performed without pause): first, a dramatic statement (soprano and ensemble); followed by an instrumental sinfonia (clarinet and cello); and finally a last dramatic statement (soprano and ensemble).
Stephen Spender’s statement concerning history and the process of imaginative renewal becomes even more important as the final quarter of the twentieth century approaches its completion. Now that most of the humorous and pretentious manifestos (“I don’t care what you play in my piece! I don’t care if you listen,” etc.) are no longer taken seriously, the stage is set for a meaningful development in the Arts once again. And here in America in 1979, it appears that Charles Ives’ “Celestial Railroad” has indeed picked up some new passengers that are headed toward those old “new” horizons.
S.
Michael Brannon
1979
artist link:
www.greywolf-artistry.com
The Orangethorpe Aria
Tis
sore pity
Oh, tis sore pity
for the Innocents
The
ever
present difficulties
and the subsequent
wailing
one step sublime
incubations
that show no signs
of punctuation
Who is languishing
free of abuse?
Is
it then that the message
is death perfectly simple?
ex
profundis
a pity for the
innocents
ex
profundis while we do
sleep
peace mongers and street elegance
should be understood as being
forever
hand in hand
nowadays as then time
ex profundis
Recorded
discredit prevail
and the Great Heavens gape
through dark Night clouds
Aye
then its backwards
like the luna petite
Angelica’s
last words
may well have said it
profoundly true, but
she has transcended
many a night portal
within a whole damned
stream of worlds
The
Innocents still weep
until this very
Day
Aye,
then its backwards
like your luna petite
for there’s no truth
tis true in the Shades
Loud
Planet
mundi laudi
tis a dark light for sure
melancolica
a serial historia
In
Nomine
Domino
