Robert ZUIDAM (b. 1964)
McGonagall-Lieder (1997-2001)
Katrien Barts (soprano), Post&Mulder (piano duet), Asko|Schönberg/Oliver
Knussen
rec. Musiekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam, 10-12 May 2012
CHALLENGE CLASSICS CC72608 [54.31]
The reputation of William McGonagall (1825-1902)
as the worst poet in the English language has hardly encouraged composers
to embark on settings of his “poetic gems”, as he termed
them. Indeed, the only setting that I can recall, that by Matyas Seiber
of The famous Tay whale, was written as a deliberately comic
number - complete with Wagnerian quotations and plentiful use of the
Volga Boat Song - for the Hoffnung concerts. There it was given gloriously
full measure in a recitation by Dame Edith Evans in her best Lady Bracknell
style. Actually Robert Zuidam only sets two of McGonagall’s poems
in this cycle of “Lieder” - his Address to the New Tay
Bridge and The Tay Bridge Disaster. The two poems are linked,
the first commemorating the opening of the “strong and securely
built” bridge in 1875, and the second lamenting its collapse during
a thunderstorm in 1879. McGonagall himself seems to have been blissfully
unaware of the irony.
In his substantial booklet note the composer claims that “bad
poetry can be an excellent source of inspiration for a composer.”
I was sceptical about this claim, but Zuidam makes an arguable case
for treating McGonagall as seriously as McGonagall took himself. The
‘cycle’ opens with an extended prelude for piano duet, played
with proper solemnity by Pauline Post and Nora Mulder. The music sounds
in places like Messiaen at his most splashily ecstatic, but its connection
to McGonagall seems tangential at best, almost as if a completely different
work has been spliced on to the beginning. When after ten minutes or
so the voice finally enters, it is startling to hear McGonagall’s
text declaimed by a coloratura soprano employing all the devices
of the modern avant garde, with wide-ranging leaps, screams,
glissandi and other effects. Were it not for the fact that the
text of the poems were supplied in the booklet, it would be almost impossible
to decipher a word that the resourceful Katrien Barts sings. She is
amazing in the way she manages to encompass the extremely high range
which she is given to negotiate, so perhaps it would be churlish to
complain. It does make one wonder why composers feel the need to use
existing poetic texts at all. Gerard McBurney, reviewing Thomas Ades’s
Powder her face for the sadly defunct International Opera
Collector many years ago, made the same point eloquently: “It’s
not just that those pseudo-Bergian sevenths and ninths sound strained
even in the mouth of someone who sings like a xylophone; it is that
they inevitably mangle the vowels so that the sense of line keeps disappearing.”
Those words are just as true today as they were when they were written
in 1998. The accompaniment, scored for low strings and piano duet, adds
nothing to the meaning of the incomprehensible delivery of the doggerel
verses.
To do him justice, the composer does address these concerns in his booklet
notes. “Woolly, ritualistic formulations, followed by vigorous,
unexpected outbursts. Minute observations and dazzling bombastic virtuosity,
resulting in a hypnotizing anti-lyricism; a limp sense of meter wanders,
seemingly clueless, through an unhinged linguistic landscape.”
He is describing the poetry of McGonagall, but the same words could
also be used to describe the way in which Zuidam’s music reflects
those ideas. After the end of the first poem we are given over quarter
of an hour of purely instrumental music, at first scored for two pianos
and strings and then for two pianos alone. Again the resources of the
avant garde are much in evidence; string glissandi swoop
and swirl about in a disjointed fashion.
When the voice finally re-enters, we are given a sort of stuttering
Gaelic keen which is the score’s sole acknowledgement of the Scottish
milieu of the poems. The fall of the passengers into the “silvery
Tay” is portrayed by the dropping of what the booklet informs
us is “ninety pingpongballs” (who was counting?), an idea
which derives I suppose from Stravinsky’s Petruchka where
the composer asked for a tambourine to be similarly dropped to depict
the breaking of the puppet’s neck; but the subsequent outraged
screams from the singer indicate that we are supposed to take this very
seriously indeed. Quite suddenly we get a chorale melody to the words
“On the last Sabbath day of 1879, which will be remembered for
a very long time” - and we find ourselves in the same world of
parody as Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight songs for a mad king,
although the word-setting lacks the maniacal theatricality of that masterpiece.
Actually one might conceive that Maxwell Davies could set McGonagall
to good effect - how about it?
Apart from the sheer incomprehensibility of the diction - hardly the
fault of the singer - the performers throw themselves into the music
with wholehearted dedication and commitment, making the best possible
case for the score. The recording is excellently clear; you can hear
everything. The disc itself is handsomely packaged, with the normal
booklet and jewel box contained in two outer sleeves. As for the music
itself, it is not unapproachable or unenjoyable, but it is all terribly
serious; the spirit of McGonagall has gone missing somewhere.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
