Joyce Music – Barber: Nuvoletta
- At March 06, 2022
- By Great Quail
- In Joyce
- 0
What can you do when you get lines like “Nuvoletta reflected for the last time on her little long life, and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars; she gave a chilly, childly, cloudy cry,” except to set them instinctively, as abstract music, almost as a vocalise?
—Samuel Barber, Interview with Philip Ramey, 1978
Nuvoletta
(1947)
Allegretto, op. 25; From Finnegans Wake
Composed shortly after the War, Nuvoletta is a delightful song adapted from the “Mookse and Gripes” fable in Finnegans Wake. In the Wake, Nuvoletta—rendered by Joseph Campbell as “Little Cloud Girl”—is one of the many forms taken by Izzy/Iseult. After failing to distract Mookse and Gripes from their zero-sum theological debate, she dissolves in tears, returning her essence to the great maternal river. Barber brings the story even more down-to-earth by reimagining Nuvoletta as a fickle young girl, her friends “asleeping with the squirrels.” Posturing as a parade of princesses, she fruitlessly attempts to attract attention to herself, presumably from indifferent adults. She finally flings herself from the “bannistar” in mock desperation.
One of Barber’s most complex songs, the music follows Joyce’s colorful language in lilting 3/8 time, as fickle and fluid as Nuvoletta herself. The song skips and pirouettes, comes to sudden stops, falls into a mock-reverential hush, and breaks free with colorful bursts of melismatic soprano. Barber called Nuvoletta “slightly ironic,” peppering the score with surprising delights, including a subdued “Tristan chord” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, snippets of atonality, and a playful reference to the “drowning theme” from Schubert’s “Der Müller und der Bach.”
Excerpt from Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music
By Barbara Heyman
Samuel Barber: The Composer and His Music
Oxford University Press, 1992
Joyce’s prose was to inspire … Nuvoletta, which was finished 17 October 1947 while Barber was working with Eleanor Steber in preparation for the premiere of Knoxville: Summer of 1915. For Nuvoletta Barber drew excerpts from one of the most moving passages in Finnegans Wake, where the daughter (Nuvoletta-Isabel-Issy) plays one of her several death scenes. Her reflections are in typically multilayered Joycean language: invented words, double entendres, and puns that fuse conscious and unconscious meanings. The song was viewed as “for sophisticates only” by a British music critic, and even Barber confessed that he did not entirely understand the text:
What can you do when you get lines like “Nuvoletta reflected for the last time on her little long life, and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars; she gave a chilly, childly, cloudy cry,” except to set them instinctively, as abstract music, almost as a vocalise?
Nevertheless, Joyce’s colorful prose prompted a kaleidoscope of musical imagery and puns: a monotonal plainsong incants From Vallee Maraia to Grasyaplaina, dormimust, echo!; a “Tristan chord” supports as were she born to bride with Tristis—Tristior; metric groupings correspond to the tears of night began to fall, first by ones and twos, then by threes and fours, at last by fives and sixes of sevens. The song, one of Barber’s longest and most capricious in mood, has a wide-range tessitura of two octaves (b# to b#”). Its rondolike form is interrupted with an elaborate vocal cadenza.
Steber sang the first performance of Nuvoletta, although the date is undocumented. In 1963 she recorded the song on a historic program of American songs sponsored by the Alice M. Ditson Fund and Columbia University. The recording … was called “treasurable” by Alan Rich, who cited Barber’s song for its wit and high art. Nuvoletta has been seldom performed, probably because the song demands from the singer a certain kind of endurance—that is, continued attention to exactly what mood is being projected—and a sustained balance between dramatic wit and gentle lyricism. Roberta Alexander’s recent recording is a welcome interpretation of this enigmatic song.
Liner Notes from Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs
By Dylan Perez
Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs
Resonus, 2022
Born in 1910, Samuel Barber knew what he wanted from very early in his life. Such strength of character and courage to follow his path is heard in his music; at a me when American classical music was heavily influenced by experimentalism, Barber’s inclination for ‘traditional’ harmony and melody helped set him apart. What I have always loved about Barber’s vocal music is the ease he finds in the marriage of text and music. Even in the posthumous songs, some recorded here for the first time, he always puts the text first, inspired by both contemporary and ancient texts.
In Nuvoletta, Op. 25, Barber returns to James Joyce, this time excerpting from Finnegans Wake. While the text is extremely dense, the excerpt that Barber chooses is a short scena that can be more easily understood, even if it is out of context. A little girl, Nuvoletta, is trying to catch the attention of others, only to fail and, in dramatic fashion, feigns suicide by jumping from a bannister. Barber’s ingenious setting marries Nuvoletta’s innocence with a lilting 3/8, the piano lightly commenting on the Joycean invented words that populate the text: sisteen shimmers, bannistar, sfumastelliacinous. Charming compositional techniques are found throughout, but hidden from the immediate ear of the listener; at mention of ‘Tristis Tristior Tristissimus’, a hint of Wagner’s Tristan shines through, while later when Nuvoletta’s tears fall in numbers, Barber mirrors them with intervallic leaps in the voice and rhythmic gestures in the piano. A melismatic weep brings the voice to the stratosphere before returning to the lilt found at the beginning, before Nuvoletta jumps and the song ends in a haze.
Text
Nuvoletta
Nuvoletta in her lightdress,
spunn of sisteen shimmers,
was looking down on them,
leaning over the bannistars
and listening all she childishly could…
She was alone.
All her nubied companions
were asleeping with the squirrels…
She tried all the winsome wonsome ways
he four winds had taught her.
She tossed her sfumastelliacinous hair
like la princesse de la Petite Bretagne
and she rounded her mignons arms
like Mrs. Cornwallis-West
and she smiled over herself
like the image of a pose of a daughter
of the Emerour of Irelande
and she sighed after herself
as were she born to bride with Tristus
Tristior Tristissimus.
But, sweet madonine, she might fair as well
have carried her daisy’s worth to Florida…
Oh, how it was duusk!
From Vallee Maraia to Grasyaplainia,
dormimust echo!
A dew! Ah dew! It was so duusk
that the tears of night began to fall,
first by ones and twos,
then by threes and fours,
at last by fives and sixes of sevens,
for the tired ones were wecking,
as we weep now with them.
O! O! O! Par la pluie!…
Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time
in her little long life
And she made up all her myriads
of drifting minds in one.
She cancelled all her engauzements.
She climbed over the bannistars;
she gave a childy cloudy cry:
Nuée! Nuée!
A lightdress fluttered
She was gone.
Finnegans Wake
The origin of the song is a long passage from Finnegans Wake, 157.8 to 159.20:
FW 157
Nuvoletta in her lightdress, spunn of sisteen shimmers, was
looking down on them, leaning over the bannistars and listening
all she childishly could. How she was brightened when Should-
rups in his glaubering hochskied his welkinstuck and how she
was overclused when Kneesknobs on his zwivvel was makeact-
ing such a paulse of himshelp! She was alone. All her nubied
companions were asleeping with the squirrels. Their mivver,
Mrs Moonan, was off in the Fuerst quarter scrubbing the back-
steps of Number 28. Fuvver, that Skand, he was up in Norwood’s
sokaparlour, eating oceans of Voking’s Blemish. Nuvoletta lis-
tened as she reflected herself, though the heavenly one with his
constellatria and his emanations stood between, and she tried all
she tried to make the Mookse look up at her (but he was fore too
adiaptotously farseeing) and to make the Gripes hear how coy
she could be (though he was much too schystimatically auricular
about his ens to heed her) but it was all mild’s vapour moist. Not
even her feignt reflection, Nuvoluccia, could they toke their
gnoses off for their minds with intrepifide fate and bungless
curiasity, were conclaved with Heliogobbleus and Commodus
and Enobarbarus and whatever the coordinal dickens they did
as their damprauch of papyrs and buchstubs said. As if that was
their spiration! As if theirs could duiparate her queendim! As if
she would be third perty to search on search proceedings! She
tried all the winsome wonsome ways her four winds had taught
her. She tossed her sfumastelliacinous hair like le princesse de la
Petite Bretagne and she rounded her mignons arms like Mrs
Cornwallis-West and she smiled over herself like the beauty of
the image of the pose of the daughter of the queen of the Em-
perour of Irelande and she sighed after herself as were she born
FW 158
to bride with Tristis Tristior Tristissimus. But, sweet madonine,
she might fair as well have carried her daisy’s worth to Florida.
For the Mookse, a dogmad Accanite, were not amoosed and the
Gripes, a dubliboused Catalick, wis pinefully obliviscent.
—I see, she sighed. There are menner.
The siss of the whisp of the sigh of the softzing at the stir of
the ver grose O arundo of a long one in midias reeds: and shades
began to glidder along the banks, greepsing, greepsing, duusk
unto duusk, and it was as glooming as gloaming could be in the
waste of all peacable worlds. Metamnisia was allsoonome coloro-
form brune; citherior spiane an eaulande, innemorous and un-
numerose. The Mookse had a sound eyes right but he could not
all hear. The Gripes had light ears left yet he could but ill see.
He ceased. And he ceased, tung and trit, and it was neversoever
so dusk of both of them. But still Moo thought on the deeps of
the undths he would profoundth come the morrokse and still
Gri feeled of the scripes he would escipe if by grice he had luck
enoupes.
Oh, how it was duusk! From Vallee Maraia to Grasyaplaina,
dormimust echo! Ah dew! Ah dew! It was so duusk that the
tears of night began to fall, first by ones and twos, then by threes
and fours, at last by fives and sixes of sevens, for the tired ones
were wecking, as we weep now with them. O! O! O! Par la
pluie!
Then there came down to the thither bank a woman of no
appearance (I believe she was a Black with chills at her feet) and
she gathered up his hoariness the Mookse motamourfully where
he was spread and carried him away to her invisible dwelling,
thats hights, Aquila Rapax, for he was the holy sacred solem and
poshup spit of her boshop’s apron. So you see the Mookse he
had reason as I knew and you knew and he knew all along. And
there came down to the hither bank a woman to all important
(though they say that she was comely, spite the cold in her heed)
and, for he was as like it as blow it to a hawker’s hank, she
plucked down the Gripes, torn panicky autotone, in angeu from
his limb and cariad away its beotitubes with her to her unseen
FW 159
shieling, it is, De Rore Coeli. And so the poor Gripes got wrong;
for that is always how a Gripes is, always was and always will be.
And it was never so thoughtful of either of them. And there were
left now an only elmtree and but a stone. Polled with pietrous,
Sierre but saule. O! Yes! And Nuvoletta, a lass.
Then Nuvoletta reflected for the last time in her little long life
and she made up all her myriads of drifting minds in one. She
cancelled all her engauzements. She climbed over the bannistars;
she gave a childy cloudy cry: Nuée! Nuée! A lightdress fluttered.
She was gone. And into the river that had been a stream (for a
thousand of tears had gone eon her and come on her and she was
stout and struck on dancing and her muddied name was Missis-
liffi) there fell a tear, a singult tear, the loveliest of all tears (I
mean for those crylove fables fans who are ‘keen’ on the pretty-
pretty commonface sort of thing you meet by hopeharrods) for it
was a leaptear. But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh!
I’ve so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
No applause, please! Bast! The romescot nattleshaker will go
round your circulation in diu dursus.
Recordings
Compact Disc: Complete Songs
There are two recordings of Samuel Barber’s complete songs available on compact disc.
Barber: The Complete Songs (a.k.a. “Secrets of the Old”)
Cheryl Studer, Thomas Hampson, John Browning, Emerson Quartet
CD: Deutsche Grammophon, 1992
Recorded in 1991-1992 and released on Deutsche Grammophon in 1994, this venerable 2-CD set has never been out of print, a mandatory purchase for fans of Samuel Barber’s elegantly-crafted art songs. It features the soprano Cheryl Studer and the baritone Thomas Hampson, with John Browning on piano and the Emerson String Quartet backing Dover Beach. Having boasted several album covers and titles—including Secrets of the Old—this set continues to shine thirty years later. The liner notes are sparse and the production favors contemporary notions of close-miking and reverb, but the performances are stellar, all musicians in top form. John Browning was Barber’s own choice to première his Pulitzer-Prize winning Piano Concerto, so he’s as definitive a Barber interpreter as the twentieth century has to offer. Cheryl Studer is magnificent. While some operatic sopranos might be tempted to showy displays, Studer allows the lyrics to dictate her delivery, and she touches each word with an appropriate amount of grace, irony, impishness, and sorrow. (Her Nuvoletta is a delight!) And Thomas Hampson’s silky baritone is always a pleasure to hear. Although his voice is darker than the tenor Joyce had in mind, he brings a richness to each of his selections, especially the dramatic clangor of “I hear an army.” A collection that’s stood the test of time, Secrets of the Old—or whatever it’s being called at the moment!—belongs in the library of every classical music fan.
Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs
Dylan Perez, Fluer Barron, Jess Dandy, Louise Kemény, Soraya Mafi, Dominic Sedgwick, Nicky Spence, & others
CD: Resonus, 2022
Since 1994, fans of Samuel Barber had only the Deutsche Grammophon Secrets of the Old set to represent Barber’s complete songs. As good as that set is, thirty years of the same interpretations can become overfamiliar. Fortunately, this remarkable 2-CD set by Resonus has arrived to freshen things up. Interested visitors are directed to the Brazen Head review of Samuel Barber: The Complete Songs.
Compact Disc: Selected Joyce Songs
Nuvoletta is available on the following collections:
Leontyne Price Sings Barber
Soprano: Leontyne Price, Piano: Samuel Barber
CD: BMG, 1994 (Recordings from 1953-1968)
The great soprano Leontyne Price was Samuel Barber’s Cleopatra in his notoriously failed opera, Antony and Cleopatra. This CD collects Barber recordings she made in the 1950s and 1960s, and includes excerpts from the opera, as well as Nuvoletta and “Sleep now” from Three Songs op. 10. Samuel Barber himself plays the piano. Interestingly, Barber’s own version of Nuvoletta has a quicker tempo than most modern interpretations.
Barber: Songs
Soprano: Roberta Alexander, Piano: Tan Crone
CD: Etcetera, 1988
This set features the soprano Roberta Alexander accompanied by pianist Tan Crone. Released in 1988 on Etcetera, the set is erroneous labeled Barber: Complete Songs on Amazon. For the interests of Joyce enthusiasts, the CD contains Three Songs op. 10, Nuvoletta, “Solitary Hotel,” and “In the dark pinewood.” Alexander also recorded a version of “I hear an army” with full orchestra.
Mélodies Passagères: The Songs of Samuel Barber
Soprano: Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, Piano: Stephen de Pledge
CD: Quartz, 2012
For the interests of Joyce enthusiasts, this set contains Three Songs op. 10, Nuvoletta, and “Solitary Hotel.”
Online Video
The following excerpts and live performances are available on YouTube.
Barber: Nuvoletta
Soprano: Rachel Mills, Piano: Katalin Zsubrits
A live performance from 4 January 2019, recorded in Fairfield, Connecticut.
Samuel Barber: Other Joyce-Related Works
Samuel Barber Main Page
Return to the Brazen Head’s Samuel Barber profile.
Songs from Chamber Music (1935-1937)
These six songs are settings of poems from Chamber Music.
“Solitary Hotel” (1969)
From Despite & Still, this song has lyrics adapted from Ulysses.
Fadograph of a Yestern Scene (1971)
A short instrumental inspired from a line in Finnegans Wake.
“Now have I fed and eaten up the rose” (1972)
This song is based on James Joyce’s translation of a German poem by Gottfried Keller. It’s about a man who is buried alive.
Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 20 July 2022
Joyce Music Page: Bronze by Gold
Main Joyce Page: The Brazen Head
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com