I presume that a fair number of you enjoy watching Killing Eve.  I hope it’s not giving you ideas.  I will reveal the relevance (or more accurately, irrelevance) of that remark shortly.

I have some thoughts about Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) this week.  Berlioz had little musical training as a youth, though he did become a good flute player and also learnt the guitar.  There was no piano in his house and he did not learn to compose in the same way as most famous composers, through mastery of the piano.  The main musical input of his early life was music of the church and also song, especially those from the local relatively light Opéra Comique.  However, seeds were sown and he was intrigued enough to have ambitions to compose.  It is astonishing to think that the man who went off to Paris to study medicine under pressure from his father, would become the composer of such great works as the Grande Messe des Morts and The Damnation of Faust, and also of the epic opera The Trojans. 

My main work this week is the song cycle Les Nuits D’Été. Op.7

Nuits d’Été (Summer Nights) is the first song cycle to be orchestrated which has found its way into the central repertoire.  Originally written for piano accompaniment, it went through several changes over the years as the orchestral settings were each created.  Each song was dedicated to a different singer and Berlioz envisaged they would be sung by a contralto for one, tenor and baritone for one each and the other three for either mezzo-soprano or tenor.  Alternative keys were used according to which voice sang, but nowadays they are usually performed by either a mezzo-soprano or a contralto transposing down.  They only found their way onto the mainstream concert platform in the mid-1950s after they were recorded by Victoria de Los Angeles.  They have also been recorded by Janet Baker, amongst others...always a treat, though it involves some downward transposition.

I grew up with Régine Crespin’s recording and I come back to this for the timbre of her voice – rather grainier than Dame Janet Baker.  There are odd slightly questionable moments of tuning which may be intended, but it’s all unmistakeably French, superbly controlled yet displaying a feeling of freedom and abandon at times, tinged with appropriate vulnerability.  All of the songs are performed in the original keys.   Crespin’s prolific career peaked as a high soprano singing major Wagner roles at Bayreuth and Vienna, and eventually the top soprano roles (Verdi, Puccini, Beethoven Fidelio etc) at the Metropolitan Opera.  In about 1970 she began to experience difficulty with high notes and she changed to mezzo soprano – which was ideally suited to this Berlioz.  She was a great artist.

Most songs are about love, and these are no exception, the poems written by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872), an arch-Romantic poet and famous for his theory of Art for Art’s Sake.  (I won’t go there…).  The outer two songs are rather more skittish and lighter than the central four which are more dark and brooding.

1.  Villanelle:  To be fair to those of you who have not watched Killing Eve (there will be some), the spectacular main character is called Villanelle – also spectacularly acted.  In this first song two lovers look forward to springtime when they can go to the woods to pick wild lilies-of-the-valley and bring home wild strawberries. The deer stoops to admire his great antlers reflected in the pool, the couple talk of their beautiful love and Villanelle can say ‘toujours’ (always) – though the music hesitates just at that point, interestingly!  A bit of darkness lingering somewhere perhaps.

2. The Spectre of the Rose:  More reflective and tender, the two lovers having strolled all evening together at a ball.  The girl seems to have caused her lover’s death, overcome with passion!, and he reflects that he is the ghost of the rose she wore and that many a man would have given his life for such a beautiful demise, and to have her breast as a tomb. 

3.  On the Lagoons:  The girl is dead this time and her lover weeps for ever, carrying his heart and soul into the tomb.  He wishes he were with her in heaven.  The song is a lament throughout and he is intensely saddened.  I am trying not to sound flippant because the music is brooding and very touching.

4.  Absence:  Continuing the theme of loss, he calls for his lover to return, reflects on his unfulfilled desires and on the great distance now between their hearts.

5.   At the Cemetery:  A bleak and desolate song, he sings of his feelings ‘achingly tender, enchanting and deathly which hurts you…’.  The song becomes more active as ‘on the wings of music one senses a memory slowly returning’, but it is all too much and he vows never to walk again near the tomb as evening closes, or listen to the pale dove singing its plaintive song. 

6.  The Unknown Isle:  A complete change of style and looking forward to love and where he wishes it can lead.  This song is livelier and full of yearning, destinations are suggested – the Baltic, Pacific, Java, Norway.  The beauty replies ‘take me to the faithful shore where love lasts forever’.  He replies that that place is hardly known in the land of love.  It ends with a question; ‘where do you wish to go?  The breeze is going to blow.’

I am going to make an attempt to express what is great and unique about Berlioz, because he is a stand-alone figure in music history.  Some of his music had grand designs and asked for performing forces which makes Wagner look like Monteverdi.  The Te Deum calls for 12 harps (minimum!) and 35 wind and brass players.  The Grande Messe des Morts calls for 40 wind and brass players, 4 brass bands totalling 30 players, 50 violins, 20 each of violas and cellos, 18 double basses and 16 timpani, plus a chorus of over 200.  These days one has to manage with a huge amount less for obvious reasons of space and finance.  It could be considered quite over the top and may display delusions of grandeur, but one must be careful because the sound is often transparent and always brilliantly conceived.  One can only make that assessment, of course, not having heard it performed with anything like the numbers Berlioz demanded, but one can get an idea. On the contrary, Nuits d’Été calls for very modest forces, though the musical ‘language’ is as distinctive and unusual as in the larger works.

Berlioz was a great and highly original orchestrator and wrote an authoritative Treatise on Orchestration.  He was the first major composer to make extensive use of the Cor Anglais, as he did to conspicuous and, to coin a cliché, hauntingly beautiful, effect in the Symphonie Fantastique, the Grande Messe and in Marguerite’s aria in The Damnation of Faust, just to give a few examples. His understanding of the range of sounds and effects from instrumental scoring was exceptional and a product of an original mind, not too cluttered by a traditional Classical training.  But it was not just the originality of the orchestration he produced.  The harmony was also his own and, to my ears, no-one before or since has copied or tried to emulate it, though many, including Ravel and Debussy will have been influenced by his music and his orchestral effects. The sound of Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms were relatively similar, but Berlioz came from another universe, and a highly effective one, and his writing was often emotionally highly-charged.   He didn’t need huge forces to make his mark.  Herod’s aria near the beginning of L’Enfance du Christ, and these songs, reached deep into the soul and are very touching and recognisably Berlioz.

I have come back to a set of songs which were written 100 years earlier than Strauss’s Four Last Songs, but Les Nuits D’Été certainly packs a huge amount of passion. 

I hope you enjoy getting to know them if they are new to you.  Some of Berlioz takes some getting used to through slow acclimatisation.   These songs are concise and seem to ‘hit the spot’ quickly.

Here are the links to the Régine Crespin recording.  Spotify has the titles of the songs in the right order, but has mixed up the songs themselves. The correct order is as I have listed here.  What they call Absence is actually On the Lagoons, and vice versa.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Ar1zYf1jUO6kAKuNUOovV?si=lc5r9Jx_R_ujnKUzrALCUA
https://open.spotify.com/track/6i8hjV24HkksPIw0VzLKsJ?si=YTkng8mrTKC2B-WTsXmhjQ
https://open.spotify.com/track/5spy9S7AdV08kWkIDFnyv2?si=umACv2ZBSdKFSi_3yo3Gug
https://open.spotify.com/track/7sS5Nr2gk3fAox7GUPDqJK?si=HLQpYRiXTvWuzeeOv1UixA
https://open.spotify.com/track/5oe5qq6Rj4sUEbQU9mDT9c?si=0Auk7EnvTPqs3S0VJ2rZfw
https://open.spotify.com/track/3toVXcmFgRQGAa6aI2ZlL6?si=H0sTrmOmQzanHTWzjty6XA

Have a good week and once again, I hope you and friends and family are safe and well.  I hope these emails are helping us feel connected.

All best wishes,

Richard