A TREE TELLING OF ORPHEUS: WIND’S VOICE
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
The music of A Tree Telling of Orpheus: Wind's Voice follows a three-part structure. The first of these parts (which itself gives rise to a smaller, three-part format) is anchored by the pitch D, heard throughout as both a point of departure and return. The piece begins with a sustained note, played by the violins, which soon blossoms upward to form the interval of a major sixth. The gesture is answered by the piccolo and clarinet, which play the same interval (although with different notes). The whole process restarts, but this time it unfolds in a new way, eliciting a different reaction from other instruments. Subsequent iterations and evolutions of the opening gesture mobilize the entire orchestra, spinning out fervent melodies that span the range of the ensemble. Suddenly, the music is seized by stasis—time seems to stop, frozen on a single pitch, as the simple, opening gesture of the piece returns.
But our center of gravity begins to shift. Ardent stretching of the strings reaches toward a new pitch center, B—stated emphatically by the piccolo and cellos, in alternation—announcing the start of the second major section of the piece. The instruments, now fully awakened from a sensual, bewildering dream, engage in a jubilant kind of music. Sharp-edged rhythms and swelling melodies may, at times, conjure for the listener scenes of a gusty afternoon at high seas. A brief pause precedes the raucous final section of the piece. Here, uneven alternations of meter and repeating melodic figures (often frantic) lend to the music a punchy, off-kilter, dance-like character.
A Tree Telling of Orpheus: Wind's Voice was premiered by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on April 14, 2010, in Saint Paul, MI.
LINK TO DENISE LEVERTOV’S POEM “A TREE TELLING OF ORPHEUS”
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A Tree Telling of Orpheus:
Wind’s Voice (2010)
for chamber orchestra
Duration: 11 minutes
Division: 2212/2200/percussion/piano/strings
Premiere: April 14, 2010
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
Program Note:
The title is taken from a poem by Denise Levertov. In “A Tree Telling of Orpheus,” Levertov gives us the perspective of a towering, inanimate stalk from a coastal grove, whose consciousness is one day awakened by a strange, inchoate sound. At first, the tree mistakes this peculiar reverberation—something of a “rippling” effect—as nothing more than a harmonious gust of sea wind. As the tones near, however, they are revealed as the enchanted arpeggios of Orpheus, playing his lyre. The intoxicating resonance of this music penetrates each trunk in the grove to its stoic, pulpy core. So moved are these trees, in fact, that they begin to extract—slowly and painfully—their ancient, twisted extremities from the ground, so that they can follow Orpheus. “Clumsily, stumbling over our own roots,” the trees dance their way through awkward, agonizing gestures of leaves and lumber. The broad structure of A Tree Telling of Orpheus: Wind's Voice—from its mysterious, initial ripples to the hard-bitten, almost defiant waltz that concludes the work (think ballroom dancers wearing leather and spikes)—may be heard to follow a similar narrative.
