Albert Roussel - Music for Elpénor, Poème radiophonique Op. 59 (1937)

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)
Music for Elpénor, Poème radiophonique Op. 59, for flue and string quartet (ca. 1935 -1937)

I. Prélude Lent - Très animé 0:00
II. Modéré 3:44
III. Lent 5:08
IV. Très animé 7:40

Paul Verhey, flute
Schönberg Quartet:
Janneke van der Meer, violin
Win de Jong, violin
Henk Guittart, viola
Viola de Hoog, cello

Among the projects of Roussel's last years there are extant four brief pieces for flute and string quartet. Though their dates of composition are unascertainable, Harry Halbreich noted, "These brief fragments, as perfect for the concert hall as for their original purpose, follow the simple, limpid, style of the final Roussel, and so date certainly from the last two years of his life." Thus, these delicately evocative pieces, playing together around seven minutes -- rather than the Andante & Scherzo for flute and piano (1934) -- may well be Roussel's farewell to the flute, to which he confided a number of his choicest thoughts. Before their publication and performance, Norman Demuth, in preparation for his book on the composer, appealed to Joseph Weterings, the scenarist of Roussel's final ballet, Aeneas, for information. In a letter of May 28, 1946, Weterings replied that Roussel had asked him for a libretto dealing with "the Duc de Bourgogne who perished so miserably at Nancy after having treated as man to man with the King of France." Bouts of angina pectoris, which would kill Roussel on August 23, 1937, prevented work on so ambitious a score. "It was then that he gave me some unpublished music which he had written to illustrate an imaginary action. He said to me: 'We shall thus collaborate once more. You will write a play for this music.' I was deeply moved by this delicate attention from a master mind, who died a short while after." It took Weterings at least a decade to fashion his poème radiophonique around the music -- a half-hour effusion for five actors titled "Elpénor, ou La Flûte de Circe." According to Demuth, the title is Roussel's, though he also describes the musical remains as "a suite of pieces for flute, timpani, and string quartet." In the work published by Durand in the late '40s there is no timpani. "I worked at it during the war," Weterings related. "The task was difficult, for I had no other guide than this music, which was 'pure' music, full of spirit, of poetry and warmth. Slowly the subject of 'Elpénor' matured...." One of the companions of Odysseus, Elpenor is mentioned in Book 10 of the Odyssey, though for Weterings he is little more than a name around which fanciful inventions, alien to Homer, are garlanded (e.g., Elpenor descends to the underworld to gain release for his companions, turned to swine by Circe). This hybrid was first broadcast in 1947. ~ Adrian Corleonis, Rovi

Painting: "La Grande Jatte" (1884) by Georges-Pierre Seraut (1859-1891)

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Category:

Music

Tags:

• albert
• roussel
• elpenor
• poeme
• radiophonique
• flute
• string
• quartet
• chamber
• music

[turboturbante]

Lovely music. The finale is really short xD