Joyce Music – Arnaoudov: FOOTNOTE
- At June 26, 2022
- By Great Quail
- In Joyce
0
Mythology is a term derived from μῦθος—and that means a word, speech, whereas mystique comes from μύστης—a derivative of μύω—“to close” (in the ancient practice of initiation—the eyes or the mouth), “to keep silent.” To define these two categories derived from sound and silence, is something great.
—Gheorghi Arnaoudov
FOOTNOTE (…und Isolde/ns Winkfall lassen…)
—an imaginary interlude to the second act of “Tristan and Isolde” after the text of James Joyce
(1991)
For cello, chamber orchestra, and Sprechstimme
Bearing the improbably long title FOOTNOTE (…und Isolde/ns Winkfall lassen…)–an imaginary interlude to the second act of “Tristan und Isolde” after the text of James Joyce, this 15-minute work is scored for cello, chamber ensemble, and soprano Sprechstimme. As its name suggests, the piece is intended as an “imaginary interlude” for Act II of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, connecting the scene where Isolde parts from her maid, Brangäne, and awaits a rendezvous with her lover Tristan. (The German in the title is partially invented, combining an archaic possessive with a word coined from semiotics. It may be translated as “…and Isolde’s episode of falling through all signs and significations.”) While adding a “Joycean interlude” to Wagner’s masterpiece might be considered an act of reckless arrogance, Arnaoudov pulls it off smartly, avoiding parody and pastiche and maintaining his own distinct voice. FOOTNOTE may be rooted in Wagner’s dense Romanticism, but it’s nourished and shaped by Arnaoudov’s twentieth-century idioms.
The text of FOOTNOTE is drawn from James Joyce’s poem “A Prayer,” an anguished cry for erotic obliteration written in 1924 and published in Pomes Penyeach. Sensitive to the melodrama of the poem, Arnaoudov places Joyce’s florid words in the mouth of a woman confiding her deepest desires and fears, a nocturnal monodrama reminiscent of Schönberg’s Erwartung. However, unlike Erwartung, there are no operatic fireworks to brighten the Sprechstimme—Isolde’s “prayer” is moaned, whispered, breathed into the night. This hothouse atmosphere is made even more exotic by a fragment of Latin inserted between Joyce’s stanzas: “Sanguis natura calidus et humidus est, colore ruber, qualitate dulcis.” From Hippocrates, it can be translated as: “Blood by nature is hot and moist, red in color and sweet in quality.”
While Joyce’s poem has no direct relationship to the story of Tristan and Isolde, Joyce was famously fascinated by the Celtic myth and the opera it inspired, naming an important character in Finnegans Wake after Iseult/Isolde. Finnegans Wake may contain more overtly “Wagnerian” passages, but Arnaoudov has selected wisely: the words of Izzy’s Wake would be too abstract, mercurial. Joyce’s “A Prayer” is perfectly suited to these operatic lovers: joyous, anguished, and doomed.
FOOTNOTE opens on the cello, a sustained “E” gliding upward like the rising of a curtain. Violins and viola arrive to build a sense of expectancy, while clarinet and French horn stir to life, sleepy birdcalls in the forest gloom. Hesitant notes plucked from a guitar bring us closer to Isolde, who breathes the word “Again” over a ghostly melody sprinkled across the piano’s highest keys. The orchestral tension comes to a head, a dissonant surge before the whisper continues: “Come…”
It’s a loaded word; followed by another command, “Give, yield, all your…for me.” Here Arnaoudov drops the word “strength” from Joyce’s poem, leaving a blank space for listeners to fill with their imagination. There’s a sense of erotic delirium to Joyce’s poem, not to mention Wagner’s opera itself, famously derided by the critic J.L. Klein as “demoniacal lewd caterwauling.” Arnaoudov responds in kind: the music is sensuous, voluptuous; the words of Isolde’s prayer slipping through a dreamy soundscape of droning strings, quivering woodwinds, and spidery caresses of guitar. Every so often the ghost of Wagner is felt: the flute or horn shudders with a familiar, momentary figure before returning to its languid drifting. It’s easy to imagine Isolde in her forested bower, the brazier extinguished and the sound of King Marke’s hunting horns fading in the distance. Awaiting her illicit lover, she lies on the forest floor, her mind unmoored by anxious longing and presentiments of doom. Her familiar world—represented by the opera’s lush score—is breaking down, ripening into fervid hallucination. Its once-familiar elements have become unbound, floating free as they transform into strange new shapes. Only the recurring presence of the cello anchors her body to the damp, Wagnerian moss, holding her earthbound as she rehearses her Liebestod.
FOOTNOTE reaches its musical and emotional climax during the middle stanza of the poem: “Blind me with your dark nearness…” Arnaoudov fractures Joyce’s febrile verses into overlapping fragments. Impossible for one voice to articulate, in concert the soloist must select whether to end one sentence or begin another; the result is a moment of breathless excitement. (The score allows for two overlapping voices, but in recording or performance this is rarely done.) This passage is followed by a tense orchestral interlude where the instruments struggle for attention over the close-miked sound of the soprano’s heavy breathing. Order is restored by the strings, which resume the expectant drone that opened the piece. Appropriately for this ricorso, the speaker resumes with, “Again…” As she recites her final lines, a Joycean ambiguity creeps in:
together, folded by the night, they lay on earth.
I hear from far her low word breathes on my breaking brain.
Given the theme of cuckoldry common to Joyce’s work, the poem’s unexpected shift from a first-person perspective to “they/she” is provocative. Is it just a poetic device, or does it mean something more? Of course, in the context of Tristan und Isolde, it’s important to recall what happens after Arnaoudov’s “imaginary interlude”—King Marke returns to find the lovers in each other’s arms, setting in motion their terrible fate. Do these lines represent Isolde’s premonition of this moment? As the instruments fade away, Isolde’s voice climbs a ladder of notes plucked from a solo guitar, her final words—“take me, save me, o spare me”—whispered to the silent void.
Liner Notes from the 2010 Labor CD
Liner notes written by Kalina Radicheva:
Labor Records new release presents Bulgarian composer Gheorghi Arnaoudov’s highly original and hauntingly imaginative musical canvases of sound and text pregnant with movement and stasis.
Bulgarian composer Gheorghi Arnaoudov has forged a profound body of work deeply rooted in minimalism and, at the same time, creating an intensely imaginative, vibrating sound world that constantly defies convention. His vital use of a variety of literary sources, aesthetic ideas, and collaborations with other art forms distinguish his music in today’s European concert culture. Labor Records’ latest release, The Way of the Birds, presents four sound-poems from Bulgaria’s most cosmopolitan compositional voice at the height of his powers, music that captures the freedom of flight and engages in conversations with poets, philosophers, and folk traditions across the ages.
The Way of the Birds I–III (1995-1996) represent three large fragments from Arnaudov’s cycle of tone-poems for soprano and various chamber ensembles based on medieval Bulgarian love texts from the 17th and 18th centuries as collected in the 1861 Zagreb edition of the Miladinovi brothers’ Bulgarian Folksongs. Growing organically out of collaborations with Bulgarian choreographer Mila Iskrenova, these sumptuous works weave authentic ritual chants and amorous texts into polymorphous, dream-like dances suggesting the sensation of flight.
Arnaoudov’s FOOTNOTE (…und Isolde/ns Winkfall lassen) was written in 1991 for voice (Sprechstimme), cello, and chamber orchestra; it is based on the poem “A Prayer” (1924) from the Pomes Penyeach collection by James Joyce. Subtitled “An Imaginary Interlude to the Second Act of Tristan and Isolde”, FOOTNOTE refers to the scene in which Isolde, after her meeting with Brangäne, waits impatiently for the arrival of Tristan. The German subtitle is also imaginary—a strange combination of an archaic possessive form and a semiotic neologism.
Experiencing these works, performed at an extraordinarily high musical level by some of Bulgaria’s top artists, is to enter into Arnaoudov’s sublime, surrealistic sound world of colors and vibrations, of emotion and meaning. Labor Records continues its tradition of presenting music of exceptional creativity with this release of Gheorghi Arnaoudov’s music of stasis—an intense minimalism full of emotion and silence—music that is both of our time and beyond time.
Text
FOOTNOTE
Again
come, give, yield all your…
for me
from far a low word breathes on my breaking brain
sanguis natura
calidus et humidus est colore ruber
qualitate dulcis
cease, silent love, my doom
Blind me with your dark nearness,
O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread
draw from me my slow life
still bend deeper on me
my slow life
threatening head,
Bend deeper on me
Proud of my downfall, remembering, pitying
Again
together, folded by the night, they lay on earth.
I hear from far her low word breathes on my breaking brain.
Come come I yield
bend deeper upon me
I’m here subduer, do not leave me
only joy, only anguish,
take me, save me, o spare me
“A Prayer” By James Joyce
Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission’s misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!
Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!
Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!
Recordings
Gheorghi Arnaoudov: FOOTNOTE (2010)
Conductor: Lubomir Denev
Musicians: Chamber Ensemle “Musica Nova”
Soprano: Tanya Kazandjieva-Chauche
CD: The Way of the Birds. Labor Records LAB7068 (2010)
Purchase: CD [Amazon], Digital [Presto Music]
Track Listing
1. The Way of the Birds 1, for soprano, flute & violin
2. The Way of the Birds 2, for soprano & chamber ensemble
3. The Way of the Birds 3, for soprano, clarinet, violin, cello & percussion
4. FOOTNOTE, for chamber ensemble
Musicians
Tanya Kazandjieva-Chauche, Soprano
Christo Pavlov, Flute
Ludmil Nentchev, Violin
Mila Pavlova, Flute
Kostadin Yotsov, Oboe
Rossen Idealov, Clarinet
Stoyan Pavlov, Percussion
Maria Palieva, Percussion
Roumen Kroumov, Piano
Yossif Radionov, Violin
Angel Stankov, Violin
Alexandra Docheva, Violin
Gheorghi Stoyanov, Viola
Kalina Krusteva, Cello
Nadja Dimitrov, Piano
There’s only one available commercial recording of FOOTNOTE, paired with The Way of the Birds and released on CD by Labor Records in 2010. The quality of the recording is excellent, the playing deliciously languid and appropriately decadent. However, the poorly-translated liner notes leave much to be desired, and fail to credit musicians present on the FOOTNOTE recording—neither guitar nor French horn are mentioned, two instruments critical to the score. This omission calls into question whether FOOTNOTE was actually recorded using the same musicians as The Way of the Birds, including soprano Tanya Kazandjieva-Chauche. No matter the identity of the speaker—whether Kazandijeva-Chauche, who sings on The Way of the Birds; Dobrina Ikonomova, who premièred FOOTNOTE on a now-deleted WAV recording; or some unnamed soprano—she delivers Joyce’s poem with a hushed intensity, her Eastern-European accent striking each syllable with a flinty edge. Still, there’s something charming about her idiosyncratic reading, which certainly evokes the Teutonic Isobel of Wagner more than the willowy lass of Celtic legend!
Online Video
The following excerpts and live performances are available on YouTube.
Arnaoudov: FOOTNOTE (…und Isolde/ns Winkfall lassen…)
Recorded on 22 June 2019, at the ANNEX Theatre, Vancouver.
Conductor: Leslie Dalia
Soprano: Heather Pawsey
An excellent and heartfelt performance, this 
Additional Information
The Way of the Birds
Presto Music offers a downloadable version of this CD
FOOTNOTE Score
Available for perusal from Arnaoudov’s Web page
Gheorghi Arnaoudov Website
The composer’s official homepage is the most complete source of Arnaoudov information on the Web.
Arnaoudov on The Modern Word
Gheorghi Arnaoudov Main Page
Return to the Brazen Head’s Gheorghi Arnaoudov profile.
Garden of Forking Paths Arnaoudov Page
The Modern Word’s Borges site profiles several compositions created by Arnaoudov inspired by the writing of Jorge Luis Borges.
Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 16 June 2024
Joyce Music Page: Bronze by Gold
Main Joyce Page: The Brazen Head
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com