Once considered as the "Standard Bearer of the
New", to quote Roger Covell’s phrase, Meale composed a good deal
of strikingly original and modern works (e.g. Coruscations)
in the wake of composers such as Boulez, Stockhausen or his near-contemporaries
Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies. In the mid-1970s he obviously went through
an artistic crisis which stopped him from composing for several years.
Some time later he returned to composition and the first fruit of his
musical rebirth was the splendid, exuberant and colourfully scored orchestral
work Viridian completed in 1975. In this lushly impressionistic
piece Meale turned his back on radical modernism. Nevertheless, this
superbly crafted piece is clearly of its time; and influences, if such
there really are, are fully absorbed and made part of Meale’s renewed
music making. The music does not set out to imitate Debussy. It rather
reflects Meale’s own brand of Impressionism in which beautifully atmospheric
textures dominate. Sensuality has now the upper hand, though the music
is still strictly under control; but formal preoccupations are no longer
predominant.
Meale composed his second opera Mer de Glace
to a libretto by David Malouf in the early 1990s. Byron and Shelley
are the poetic inspirations, and the opera interweaves the events of
the brief holiday when the Shelleys and the Byrons met at Lake Geneva,
with elements from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Meale chose four
scenes from the opera and reworked them so that they "stand by
themselves as a musical piece" while conveying the atmosphere of
the opera. The first piece On the Mer de Glace vividly evokes
the Alps and some massive ice crags, whereas the second piece Prelude
: Lake Geneva is a beautiful reverie. Village Dance alludes
to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In this scene the monster desperately
tries to join the village folk’s dance. The final scene is Mary Shelley’s
Nightmare. The Romantic subject matter of the opera allowed for
a great deal of stylistic freedom, and Meale wrote unashamedly communicative
and vividly evocative music, much in the same vein as Viridian.
Meale completed his Symphony No.1 in
1994. This powerfully impressive piece is an extended movement in modified
sonata form (the composer’s words). Everything in this tightly argued
piece derives from the opening thematic figure. The work opens with
a bold gesture played by the horns, reminiscent of Bruckner; and the
music unfolds almost effortlessly, though logically through various
contrasted episodes, building-up towards some shattering climaxes and
ending with a grand restatement of the opening horn gesture. Meale’s
intense and weighty First Symphony is a quite impressive achievement
of its own; but it is also a rather puzzling one, were it only for the
Bruckner allusions recurring through the piece. Meale, the Bearer of
the New, has obviously travelled far.
David Porcelijn conducts vital readings of these pieces
that shed light on Meale’s recent musical progress. Recording and production
are excellent.
Hubert Culot
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra;
David Porcelijn