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| Walt Whitman, age 35, July 1854 from the frontispiece to Leaves of Grass |
Robert Hugill: Et expecto resurrectionem, cantata for tenor, baritone and piano, shall be premiered by Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor), James Atkinson (baritone) and Nigel Foster (piano) on the live performance Out of the Shadows at Hinde Road Methodist Church on Friday 3 February 2023 [further details].
My cantata Et expecto resurrectionem appears at concepts of resurrection and everlasting life, beginning with the Latin creed and transferring via cryogenics, physique snatchers, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, ending with a passage from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The work had fairly a fancy genesis, having began out virtually as a special work solely and alongside the way in which it spawned my quick opera The Genesis of Frankenstein.
One Sunday in 2015, I used to be sitting within the choir at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Chelsea throughout Latin mass, ready for the choir’s subsequent piece and quite wool-gathering. At such moments I quite get concepts for music and having simply sung the Latin Creed I used to be mulling over the concept of making a piece exploring life after loss of life, increasing on the phrase ‘Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum’.
The issue was, the extra I believed in regards to the concept later, the extra hassle I had discovering texts that I needed to set. My authentic concept had been merely a spiritual work exploring what resurrection meant. However having espresso with a singer buddy, to whom I discussed my difficulties, she responded with the concept of increasing what resurrection would possibly imply.
So, I proceeded to discover topics comparable to Cryogenics, the early Nineteenth-century Edinburgh physique snatchers Burke and Hare, and even Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, making the cantata much less in regards to the non secular concept of resurrection and extra about man’s determined seek for life after loss of life.
The consequence was an eclectic set of texts which moved from Wikipedia on Cryogenics to a pair of broadsheet ballads about Burke and Hare, to my very own extremely digested model of Frankenstein, all interspersed with phrases from the Creed. To this point, so good. I set to, writing for 3 soloists, soprano, tenor and bass, with instrumental ensemble. I accomplished the piece however remained dissatisfied. The stability didn’t appear to be fairly proper, and the Frankenstein part gave the impression to be far stronger than the remainder of the work. I did what I all the time do when dissatisfied with a chunk, I put it to 1 facet so I may come again later and re-think.
I found that Ella Marchment‘s
Helios Ensemble, music director Noah Mosley, was on the lookout for proposals
for brief operatic works to go on a programme to be offered round
Hallowe’en. And thus, The Genesis of Frankenstein was born, my enlargement of the Frankenstein part
of my resurrection piece, tailored for soprano, tenor, baritone, violin,
viola, cello, piano and clarinet. It was staged in October 2015 at
Helios Collective’s Toi Toi 2015, and that gave the impression to be that.
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| Robert Hugill The Genesis of Frankenstein The Helios Collective with Mimi Jaeger, Anuschka Socher, Isolde Roxby, Noah Mosley at CLF Arts Cafe as a part of Toi Toi 2015 |
Throughout lockdown in 2020, I began looking outdated tasks, finishing and revising them. I returned to the texts for the work I used to be calling Et expecto resurrectionem and determined to have one other go, beginning once more by setting the texts from scratch. The very first thing I realised was the Frankenstein part wasn’t a passable ending for the work, so I forged round for a remaining textual content.
Throughout 2019, I had interviewed composer Ian Venables [see my interview]; technically the interview was imagined to be about his Requiem, however we ended up chatting extensively about track writing and the topic of Walt Whitman got here up. I had confessed that I discovered Whitman tough to set, and Ian had stated that he had too, however lately had returned to the poet and located him rewarding.
Thus, I went Whitman, and remembered Holst’s Ode to Loss of life, which I sang as a pupil in Manchester, and which was completed on the BBC Proms in 2018. I discovered that the textual content from the Leaves of Grass fitted my necessities, a type of transcendental meditation on loss of life, the afterlife and music.
I set to, and wrote a brand new cantata for tenor, baritone and piano, although one or two fragments of the unique materials discovered their method into the brand new piece. The piece developed organically. Fairly than particular person solos for the 2 singers, the vocal strains weave round one another, generally the one finishing the opposite’s phrases. And because the piece progressed, I realised that the actions flowed into one another, forming a single steady entire and I had nice enjoyable writing appropriate linking passages so the transitions labored.
The consequence has a dramaturgical circulate to it, and I fancy that it would even be staged. We start with a agency assertion of the creed, after which transfer onto cryogenics, adopted by extracts of the Burke and Hare ballads after which Frankenstein. Between these, materials from the unique creed part returns, however the ending of Frankenstein merges into the start of the Whitman setting, virtually as if our daring explorers flee their monster and discover themselves in Whitman’s transcendent panorama.
Et expecto resurrectionem shall be premiered on 3 February 2023 at Hinde Road Methodist Church by Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor), James Atkinson (baritone), Nigel Foster (piano) in a programme that features the premiere of my cantata Out of the shadows together with one thing of a retrospective of previous works together with settings of phrases by Lord Alfred Douglas, M.V. Vigorous (from How will you write a poem when you find yourself dying of AIDS), J.A.Symonds translations of Michelangelo’s sonnets and the modern American poet Carl Prepare dinner. [further details]
1 Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum
[Graduale Romanum]
2 Cryogenics
A central premise of cryonics is that long-term reminiscence, persona and identification are saved in sturdy cell buildings throughout the mind that don’t require steady mind exercise to outlive. In sure circumstances the mind can cease functioning and nonetheless later get well with retention of long-term reminiscence. Mind buildings encoding, persona, long-term reminiscence persist for a while after medical loss of life preserved by cryopreservation. Future applied sciences may restore encoded recollections to purposeful expression
Theoretic’ly potential
Morally accountable.
Morally accountable?
[adapted by the composer from Wikipedia entry on Cryogenics]
3 – Burke & Hare
Up the shut and down the stair,
In the home with Burke and Hare.
Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief
Knox, the person who buys the meat.
When first I started this wild profession,
‘Twas with the outdated pensioner,
Who died a pure loss of life final yr,However didn’t acquire a sepulchre.
The physique we delivered to Surgeons Sq.
Quickly received a prepared marketplace for’t,
And encourag’d thus to deliver some extra,
The remainder quickly adopted after it.
4 have been chok’d in Broggan’s home,
Although Broggan didn’t know,
And 4 have been homicide’d in my home,
Which precipitated my overthrow.
My sentence, due to this fact, have to be simply,
For God’s commandment says,
He that sheddeth one other’s blood,
His blood should it appease.
[traditional]
4 – Et vitam venturi
Et vitam venturi saeculi
[Graduale Romanum]
5 – On a dreary night time of November
On a dreary night time of November
I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.
With anxiousness that just about amounted to agony,
I collected the devices of life round me,
that I’d infuse a spark of being into the lifeless factor that lay at my ft.
It was already one within the morning;
when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished gentle,
I noticed the boring yellow eye of the creature open;
it breathed laborious,
a convulsive movement agitated its limbs.
I beheld the wretch
the depressing monster whom I had created.
His eyes, if eyes they could be known as, have been fastened on me.
His jaws opened, he muttered inarticulate sounds,
one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me,
however I escaped
[adapted by the composer from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein]
6 – Come beautiful and soothing loss of life.
Then with the data of loss of life as strolling one facet of me,
And the considered loss of life close-walking the opposite facet of me,
And I within the center as with companions, and as holding the arms of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night time that talks not,
All the way down to the shores of the water, the trail by the swamp within the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so nonetheless.
And the singer so shy to the remainder receiv’d me,
The grey-brown hen I do know receiv’d us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of loss of life, and a verse for him I like.
From deep secluded recesses,
From the aromatic cedars and the ghostly pines so nonetheless,
Got here the carol of the hen.
And the appeal of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their arms my comrades within the night time,
And the voice of my spirit tallied the track of the hen.
Come beautiful and soothing loss of life,
Undulate around the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
Within the day, within the night time, to all, to every,
Ultimately delicate loss of life.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For all times and pleasure, and for objects and data curious,
And for love, candy love—however reward! reward! reward!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding loss of life.
Darkish mom all the time gliding close to with smooth ft,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I deliver thee a track that when thou should certainly come, come unfalteringly.
[Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass Book XXII]
