The British singer and songwriter Elvis Costello (1954) does not fit into any one category. With more than 30 albums to his name, he is well known for combining several different genres – from punk, pop, country, reggae to jazz and even classical music. His first venture into the classical genre dates back to 1993. In that year, together with the Brodsky Quartet he recorded The Juliet Letters, an album that he himself described as “a song sequence for string quartet and voice and it has a title. It is a little bit different. It’s not a rock opera. It’s a new thing.” The experiment did not meet with enthusiasm on all sides, but it did earn him an Edison Award [a Dutch music award comparable to the Grammy Awards].
The inspiration behind the timeless song suite is the tragic story of Romeo and Juliet, and the fact that people continue to this day to leave love letters to an imaginary Juliet Capulet at the famous balcony in Verona. “I thought I'd write to Juliet, for she would understand.” So begins one of the songs. The letters all cast a less than rose-coloured light on love. As an antidote, we hear the sweeter a cappella compositions that bring the beauty of love to the fore.
The Juliet Letters
Elvis Costello came up with the idea for The Juliet Letters after reading a newspaper article about an Italian professor who wrote answers to letters to the fictious Juliet Capulet. In the letters, people expressed their feelings about a desperate love, a difficult relationship or the intense sorrow after a sudden break-up. These led Costello to the insight that the tragic heroine from Shakespeare’s play could serve as a metaphor for the disappointment people can experience in a love relationship.
A few years before reading that article, Costello had attended a concert with the London Brodsky Quartet. He saw in the four musicians the ideal partners for this new project. In November 1991, they got together for the first time to work on the textual and musical material. Both Costello and the four members of the quartet wrote parts of the whole: “The aim was to go home one evening and try to write in a letter format – everyone can write a letter. Not everything they wrote was brilliant, but not everything I write is, either. Little by little, we put together a text, and I am experienced enough to be able to recognize a good sentence when I see one. And so I ended up as the editor.”
The result was a sequence of twenty dramatic ballads about love, betrayal and death, written from the perspective of both male and female characters of varying ages. Thus, you can hear the growing jealousy of a suspicious woman in For Other Eyes, the solitude of a beloved in Romeo’s Seance or the comforting words of a man on his deathbed in The First to Leave.
An ode to love
The fact that Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets continue to serve as inspiration today is evident from the work of a number of contemporary composers, including the Swedish composer Håkan Parkman (1955–1988) and the British Grammy-nominated Anna Clyne (1980). Clyne drew her inspiration for Pocket Book, a commissioned work by the American Roomful of Teeth, by sonnets VIII and LXV. Clyne was drawn to the eighth sonnet by Shakespeare’s comparison between music and a harmonious family life. Both are supposed to protect one from a solitary life. Clyne also reflects this duality in the music: “The opening line, Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?, sounds like an upbeat for the rest of the sonnet, which whispers the intimacy characteristic of Shakespeare's sonnets. While the text is presented, the choir sings a slow, moving harmonic progression, and the music ends with a single note - alone.”
The Renaissance poet Petrarch also sung of love in his renowned Il Canzoniere or Song Book. The book contains no fewer than 366 poems, which express his love for the unattainable Laura, starting with when he first falls in love and ending with reveries after hear death. Petrarch’s poems were one of the favourites of the British composer Gavin Bryars (1943): “Petrarch’s sonnets attracted me initially because of their prominence in sixteenth-century madrigal music, but I was also drawn to the heart-rending beauty of the poetry and their sheer technical brilliance.” In 2010, Bryars set two sonnets to music under the title Two Love Songs, written for a soprano trio. His choice of setting was no accident: it gave him the space to work on the emotional intensity of the Italian language. This can be heard particularly clearly in the second song, Solo et pensoso.
A very different sound is heard in the Love Songs of the American composer Augusta Read Thomas (1964). She wrote the cycle on commission for the men’s choir Chanticleer, with each of their voices in mind. It is a kaleidoscopic work that is bulging with theatrical and playful effects.
A blue note
The Blue Bird of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1854-1924) is a classic of the British choral repertoire. The impressionistic image of nature that Mary Elizabeth Coleridge evokes in her poem of the same name inspired the composer to write a meditative composition. Time seems to stand still: above the choir floats the beautiful melody of the solo soprano, until the blue bird disappears from the scene. Its beauty did not escape Judith Bingham (1952) either. With her The Drowned Lovers, she reconstructed Stanford’s The Blue Bird, though based only on the harmonic scheme. She gave instructions that at each performance, Stanford’s original must follow without a break. Bingham added a new, less idyllic text to the music: a woman who suspects that her lover no longer loves pulls him down under water when they go for a swim. Both lovers drown: from the depths of the lake, the surface of the water resembles blue light. The tragedy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is not far away.
Commentary by Aurélie Walschaert
