Denise Duval

Somehow I'd missed the notices of Denise Duval's death - Francis Poulenc's muse during the last 10+ years of his life. Here they are - Poulenc introducing an extract from Les Mamelles de Teresias



no subtitles I'm afraid but very much worth it for those two performing together! I don't think (despite the youtube comments) that Poulenc does too badly with some singing(!) especially as he's coping with some exciting piano writing. If you want for the end you'll get as the next video the two performing extracts from the "Dialogues des Carmélites" and "Voix Humaine." Two great artists! Here's the Guardian obituary:

“For me, Duval was the Garbo of opera with a wild touch of vaudeville,” Rorem wrote. “She had clarity, intelligence, diction, beauty – with those eyes the size of eagle eggs.” For his part, Poulenc said of his muse: “This girl is pure sunlight.”

As Night Falls

The news came though yesterday of the death of the writer Jim Cotter - the composer of numerous liturgies, prayer and a thoughtful speaker. His webite is here. Having just returned from a Maundy Thursday service ending in darkness may this prayer be a memorial.

Through the dark despairing depths and the drought of the desert, through the abyss opened up by our failings and folly, we dare to risk our cry to the living God. For you will not let us escape from our greatest good. In our struggle with you, fierce, fiery Lover, let some new glory be wrought and new and unexpected life come to birth.

From Jim's service for Maundy Thursday from 'Darkness Yielding'

Helen Haslam

Rachel and Helen's sister, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

Today's I've been to Helen Haslam's funeral. I knew Helen back in the 70s-80s when her husband Frank was vicar of St Michael's Macclesfield and also in his role on the Scargill council.
It was good to meet the children whom I'd not seen since then and recall the past and where events had led us since. United in memory of a lovely person, collected and yet sparky. Two other photos are here.

Barbara Smith

Today was the funeral service for Barabara Smith - a much loved member of All Saints Church. She gave so much of herself to so many of us - the picture shows her with her husband John who died around 6 years ago.

Der Abschied (the Farewell)

Gustav Mahler - 1860 - May 18th 1911

Er stieg vom Pferd und reichte ihm den Trunk
Des Abschieds dar. Er fragte ihn, wohin
Er führe und auch warum es müßte sein.
Er sprach, seine Stimme war umflort: Du, mein Freund,
Mir war auf dieser Welt das Glück nicht hold!
Wohin ich geh? Ich geh, ich wandre in die Berge.
Ich suche Ruhe für mein einsam Herz.

The orchestration of the opening for flute, double basses and tamtam always sends a shiver down my spine. You'll find an English translation of the above - taken from the centre of this movement - here.

One of the mightiest energies, one of the most inconsiderate despotic natures, one of the most powerful spiritual potencies in our public life has departed with him. A will of unbending strength, of immovable resistance, a temperament of demonic power has destroyed the unprepossessingly weak shell.

from the Frankfurter Zeitung Obituary. Gavin Plumley has been recalling the last week of Mahler's life on his weblog.

Robert Tear

The death has been announced of the tenor Robert Tear

Thomas Morley - I saw my lady weep. Also much associated - for me - with the music of Michael Tippett.

Hugues Cuénod

The death has just been announced of Hugues Cuénod at the age of 108. He was part of the original cast of Stravinsky's Rake's Progress in 1951, he sang in Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf in 1928 (the French premiere). I posted him singing Poulenc's C last year but this seems a good opportunity to repeat that post.

There's a good long gap before the song starts (c 25 sec) but it is worth waiting for - one of my favourite Poulenc songs!

J'ai traversé les Ponts-de-Cé
C'est là que tout a commencé

a lament on the fall of France in 1940, written and first performed to an audience including German military during that war.
I'll add a link to an obituary when there is one (but in view of his age I guess there's lots prepared) - and here's the Guardian's obit.

Elsie Marshall

inside Lastingham church
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Our mother/mother -in-law/grandmother, Elsie Marshall, died on 26th November 2010, the funeral will be at St Mary's Church, West Chiltington on 10th December - all welcome.

Robert and Beth Marshall, John and Jenny Marshall
Kate, George, Clare and Chris.

Two Musketeeers

My mood was considerably lightened this week (I'm still stuck in a non-payment situation with a contract I worked on from June-October this year and which is, nominally, still on-going, so far I've received no money at all. Also, my mother died 10 days ago and I'm in the gap between the death and the funeral) when I read this bit from Giles Fraser's tribute to Colin Slee in the Church Times:

My favourite Colin Slee story involves his campaign against the swingers’ sex club that opened just a few yards from Southwark Cathed­ral. In his office, Colin had rows of box files marked “Club Wicked”. He was gathering the evidence that he needed to close the place down — which is what he eventually did.
In the course of this campaign, he hired a couple of private investiga­tors to go into the club one night and record what they saw. That par­ticular evening had a costume theme. To those who frequented Club Wicked, that meant leather and rubber bondage gear. But the private investigators thought it meant fancy dress. They turned up as two of the three Musketeers. I would often tease him about this.

Jeffrey John's sermon at Colin Slee's Requiem Eucharist is here and is worth the read!

Anthony Rolfe Johnson

The tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson died this week (in the youtube clip above he's singing with Simon Keenlyside), he always seemed so youthful - starting singing professionally at 30. Here's the Guardian obituary - the one in the Telegraph is also interesting but has him as been married one less time! They (the obituaries) both share the same wonderful photograph of him.

Born in Tackley, Oxfordshire, he was encouraged by his parents, but with no thought of taking up singing as a career. Instead he took an agricultural degree and became a farm manager, singing hymns he had learned in church to his herd of cows.

Another member of the choral society in Crawley, West Sussex, a singing teacher, told him he was in the wrong job. He eventually decided to go to the Guildhall School of Music, London, for a four-year course, which included performances of two Britten operas. When he sang Acis in Handel's Acis and Galatea in Cambridge, he was on his way. He felt as if he had been asleep for 10 years, and had suddenly awakened.

And he woke us to some wonderful performances - I'll be taking his cd of Nocturnes in the Hyperion Series of Schubert songs to listen to this week..

And for something completely different!

Also on that obituary page last week (for Anneliese Rothenberger I referenced in my last post) in the Guardian was that for Edoardo Sanguineti. My knowledge of Italian avant garde poets and playwrights is a bit limited but his name rang a bell and I read on. I got to the mention of Laborintus and light dawned! He had a long working relationship with Luciano Berio providing various libretti for him. Here's a video of part of one of those works Laborintus 2 completed in 1965, a wonderfully wild piece - do stay for the really unhinged bit from around 5' to the end!

Unfortunately no subtitles and some Italian might help! There's a recording of this on a short Harmonia Mundi release (at least there was when I bought it!)

Sophie!

Anneliese Rothenberger who sings the role of Sophie in this production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier died last week. This is the presentation of the Silver Rose:

Just wait for those stratospheric soprano lines tearing at the emotions - and the unforgettable orchestration. Handkerchiefs to the fore - not least on stage!
I'd missed this obituary and had to recover the newspaper last night after spotting a followup letter yesterday.
The film has German subtitles - if you really want the version with English then you need to go here - the film is 10 minutes but, for me, 10 minutes to be treasured. All the alternate emotion and control of the young Sophie just out of convent school.

Yvonne Loriod

The death of Yvonne Loriod was announced on Tuesday(here's a link to Roger Nichols' obituary - the widow of Olivier Messiaen and a wonderful pianist, here she is playing a movement from Messiaen's Catalogue d'Oiseaux a huge work - difficult - yes just a bit! - this is Le Traquet rieur - the Black Wheatear.

Mois de Mai. Belle matinée ensoleillée. Le Cap Béar, au-dessus de Port-Vendres (Roussillon). Falaise rocheuse, garrigues, mer bleu saphir et bleu Nattier, argentée de soleil. Joie de la mer bleue. Chant du Traquet rieur.

Oscar Romero

DSCF8062
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the murder of Oscar Romero Archbishop of San Salvador. Here are some words from another South American Roman Catholic also concerned with justice.

I love flowers more and more.
They speak to me
of how ephemeral life is
and make me face up
to eternity.

Dom Helder Camara

The Amaryllis is currently flowering in our dining room.

Tod ist Tove!

Ann Murray singing the song of the wood-dove from Schönberg's Gurrelieder, the tragedy at the heart of that work.

Ann Murray was the wife of Philip Langridge who died on Friday. There's some examples of his work on also on youtube - but I wanted to mourn. Stay for the denouement! - alas the video cuts off the closing orchestral bars. I'll be listening to Langridge in Peter Grimes later..
PS (Monday) the Guardian obituary of Langridge is now available.

Sun-treader

I listened to Carl Ruggles Sun-treader yesterday afternoon.

An inspiring prickly work which didn't get its US premiere until 1966 - it was written in 1931 and takes as its title part of a line from Robert Browning:

Sun-treader, light and life be thine forever!

a homage to Shelley and as such acts as a fitting tribute to that lover of Shelley, Michael Foot, who died yesterday.A man of principle who remained positive even when the rubbish of politics was being thrown at him. He didn't fit well with today's image conscious media driven politics. As the Guardian obituary (linked above) records:

When a general election was called in 1935, he walked into Labour's headquarters, asked for a list of constituencies that needed candidates, and was adopted the next day for Monmouth. Politics was simpler in those days.

Ruggles died at the age of 95, Foot at 96.

..turned gamekeeper

The Guardian has at last published the obituary of Edward Schillebeeckx who died on 23rd December last year (I think they were negotiating danger money with those who had to proof read his surname but that's an English perspective!). A gentle man who was, I guess, at odds with much of the Vatican power politics and got told off a number of times. I did enjoy these final words of the piece:

He may just have allowed himself a wry smile when he looked back on a 1968 declaration, published in Concilium, the still flourishing progressive theological journal that he helped to set up, which insisted that the Pope "cannot and must not supersede, hamper and impede the teaching task of theologians as scholars". His own name was there among the signatories, as was that of the then Father Ratzinger.

but go and read the piece yourself! It goes nicely with a quote I've treasured and used in an email signature for a number of years:

Conformity means death for any community. A loyal opposition is a necessity in any community.
Karol Wojtyla (1969)

Just a year later than the first quote (look at the link if you can't immediately identify the writer!)

Gaudete

Tim Hart of Steeleye Span died on Christmas eve. This video is from the Anniversary tour.

Elisabeth Söderström

Elisabeth Söderström, who died yesterday, here sings the Song to the moon from Dvořák's Rusalka

If Beverly Sills rather gushing introduction puts you off, the music starts around 50 seconds in.

David Isitt

I blogged a bit back, when his death was announced, about my memories of David Isitt, an obituary has now appeared in the Church Times (a week ago), and is now available on the web, by John Nurser:

The Revd David Isitt died at home in Cambridge on 8 August, aged 81. It has been much said that “He was a good priest.” In many ways, indeed, he was an exemplar of the radical and yet traditionally grounded vision of Christian living which gained a hold in Cambridge in the late 1950s. He was reticent, open, gifted, and of fierce integrity.

go and read it! I hope obituaries remain available on that website, otherwise I shall be forced to republish it!