Elvis Costello
Il Sogno
Declan Patrick MacManus, the son of British bandleader Ross MacManus, was
born in London in 1954 and raised in Liverpool, England. Young Declan followed
in his father's musical footsteps; he began performing in 1969 and formed his
first band, "Flip City," in the 1970s. In 1977 he changed his name to
Elvis Costello, taking his mother's maiden name (Costello) and pairing it with
Elvis Presley's first name. That same year he went on holiday from his job as a
computer operator to record an album, "My Aim is True," which became a
huge hit in England and launched his recording career. He is perhaps best known
for recordings with his rock groups "The Attractions" and "The
Impostors," but his musical inventiveness has led him into collaborations
with artists as far-ranging as Burt Bacharach, The Brodsky Quartet, Paul
McCartney, mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, guitarist Bill Frisell, composer
Roy Nathanson, The Charles Mingus Orchestra, record producer and songwriter T
Bone Burnett, and jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall (who is also Costello's
wife).
In 2000, Costello was approached by the Aterballetto dance company of Reggio
Emilia in Italy to write the score for a ballet based on Shakespeare's play A
Midsummer Night's Dream. Costello was surprised--"I had little or no
understanding of the world of dance"--but agreed to the commission. He
wrote from descriptions of the dances, and assigned different musical styles to
each of the sets of characters: classical themes for the royal court and lovers,
folk tunes for the 'rustics' (accented by the cimbalom, a kind of dulcimer), and
surprising jazz-themed numbers for the fairies. In contrast to some pop
musicians who have never learned to write musical notation, or those who cannot
orchestrate their forays into classical composition, both notation and
orchestration were Costello's. As he writes: "My orchestrations may not
obey certain conventions, but they sound just as I imagined them ... I'm just
using common sense and writing down what I want to hear."
Il Sogno (The Dream) premiered at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna on October
31, 2000. "It is an overwhelming experience to sit in a darkened theatre
and hear music that one has imagined performed by orchestra, and to see it
motivate and support the action on stage," writes Costello. "Any
momentary frustrations on my part were more than balanced by the many elements
of the score that I immediately wanted to reconsider."
He was offered the chance to reconsider when asked to record the score for
Deutsche Grammophon with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony
Orchestra, in 2004. Thomas encouraged Costello to recast the piece as a purely
orchestral one. Writes Costello: "In the end, I tried to create a piece of
music to which people might respond without any visual cues. I took out a lot of
repetitions demanded by the choreography, re-orchestrated some passages and
composed several new transitions and resolutions." The result was a suite
of movements in three "acts," most of which are performed in today's
concert.
Costello's musical language throughout the work is eclectic. As Thomas
writes, "There's a lot of jazz in this score, and there are parts that
sound quite impressionistic or Russian. He keeps coming back to these unusual
Debussy-like harmonies that begin the piece. They're always there in some
way." Those harmonies appear in the first bars of the opening segment,
Prelude, with quiet notes from the vibraphone (one of Costello's favorite
instruments) ended by a brief fluttering of woodwinds. A series of cool,
sustained chords introduces the lyrical "Sogno" or dream theme in the
Overture. A harp glissando and distant gongs signal our entry into the play's
magical realm.
Here we must pause for a brief description of that realm, which contrasts two
distinct worlds: the royal court of Theseus and Hippolyta and the woodland
domain of the fairies, led by Oberon and Titania. The plot revolves around two
pairs of mismatched lovers. Lysander and Hermia are in love, but Hermia must wed
Demetrius, who is loved unrequitedly by Helena. The couples flee to the woods,
where Oberon and Titania are quarreling. Oberon plots to use a potion to make
his wife fall in love with "some vile thing." He hears Helena pleading
with Demetrius, and asks fellow fairy Puck to use the potion to make Demetrius
love Helena, but Puck mistakenly causes Lysander to love Helena instead.
Meanwhile, a group of common workers is rehearsing a play for the wedding of
Theseus and Hippolyta, and Puck turns the face of their leader, the bombastic
Bottom, into an ass. Oberon uses his potion on Titania, and she falls in love
with Bottom. Many misunderstandings ensue, but all are righted by play's end:
each pair of lovers is reunited (Demetrius having learned to love Helena),
Bottom is restored to his human form, and all leave the fairy world happily
transformed to return to the court.
The brisk arpeggios of Puck signify the fairy's energetic mischief,
contrasted with a reprise of the dream theme in the celesta and harp. A bass
clarinet announces our arrival at The Court, where all prepare for the wedding
of Theseus and Hippolyta. We first hear the cimbalom, used to denote the
workers. This section also introduces the wedding theme, a brilliant brass
fanfare, and what Costello calls the "uncertainty theme," featuring
strings over ominous pulsing on a single note by winds and cimbalom.
Worker's Playtime introduces Bottom's band of rustics with folk melodies on
cimbalom, strings, and winds. Bottom's motif, however, continually interrupts
with brass, drums, and militaristic flourishes, representing his blustering
personality. Meanwhile, Oberon and Titania's fairy realm opens with otherworldly
harmonics on high strings. A lyrical oboe line introduces their love theme,
taken up by saxophone and clarinet. Then comes something completely unexpected:
a jazz number right out of Broadway. "When it came to the supernatural
beings," Costello explains, "I thought it only appropriate that they
should be swinging fairies." The wild saxophone solo line and bursts of
drums or brass are used here and later to portray the strife between the
characters.
The Conspiracy of Oberon and Puck reprises the haunting dream theme as the
two concoct their plot, followed by the cool and jazzy Puck Two, complete with
muted trumpets and walking bass. When the human lovers awake after Puck's
misapplied potion, The Identity Parade contrasts agitated movement in the winds
and low strings against a lyrical line in strings. Repeated staccato phrases
reflect the lovers' confused motions, each following another and none requited
in their passions. Another jazz-influenced motif builds as Helena refuses
Lysander's romantic overtures, followed by a series of abrupt pauses as the
incredulous Hermia discovers she has been abandoned.
Meanwhile, Puck has his fun with Bottom. The Face of Bottom opens with a
classically-inspired dance and is transformed to ethereal chords and more
dream-like lyrical lines. With The Spark of Love, Bottom's bluster segues into
romance as Titania is charmed by his hairy ears. The bass clarinet introduces a
gorgeous theme reminiscent of a slow, courtly Renaissance dance. It is taken up
by woodwinds, harp and celesta, and answered by a noble brass chorale.
Tormentress returns us to the jazz themes of the earlier Oberon and Titania
section, as soprano saxophone and percussion now denote quarreling between
Demetrius and Hermia. A fully-blown lyrical line opens Oberon Humbled as the
fairy king observes his queen with Bottom the ass (Bottom's bombastic motif
returns). Oberon repents and asks Puck to put things to rights. In The Fairy and
the Ass Titania dotes on Bottom, but the dream motif segues into Titania and
Oberon's love theme, as Oberon releases his wife from her spell. Sleep is
ushered in by a sexy melody flavored with saxophone and trumpet solos,
vibraphone, and lush strings straight out of the 1950s. Now the fairies release
all the humans from their spells as well.
The Wedding finale features a stately procession for the lovers that
increases in tempo to represent the happy celebrations. However, as Costello
writes, "the presence and influence of Puck is heard and felt as he briefly
suspends the action." The wedding music reaches a frenzied conclusion, then
we return to the opening bars of the work as the dream theme makes a final
emphatic statement. As Puck's ending speech in Shakespeare's play informs us:
"If we shadows have offended, Think but this an all is mended: That you
have but slumbered here While these visions did appear."
To close this essay, Dr. Kujawsky adds his own assessment of Costello's work:
"Viewed as Costello's first large-scale orchestral work, Il Sogno is a
stunning achievement. The composer not only proves to be versatile in an
impressive and eclectic range of styles from impressionist to jazz over more
than an hour's worth of music, but his handling of the orchestrations shows a
real gift for tone color and balance--all this after learning to read music a
little over ten years ago. This first effort, while not a great masterpiece, can
be compared to other first efforts such as Stravinsky's The Firebird or
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, showing great promise for a potentially major
classical composer. Few other popular composers since Gershwin have shown such a
gift for straddling the line between popular and classical music. Il Sogno
deserves inclusion in the standard orchestral repertoire."
October, 2006
|