CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Brentano String Quartet

Zankel Hall
Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 7:30 PM

Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello
Mark Strand, Speaker

LEE HYLA Howl
HAYDN The Seven Last Words of Christ (New York premiere of version with newly commissioned poem by Mark Strand)

This concert is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for young artists established by Mr. and Mrs. Anthony B. Evnin and the A. E. Charitable Foundation.

Program Notes:

LEE HYLA (b. 1952)Howl
When I began the composition of the string quartet for Howl, the tone and rhythm of Allen Ginsberg’s reading of the poem was a major inspiration and source of musical ideas. I wanted to convey a sense of the music emerging from the poem and reading, and then, as the piece evolved, have the quartet become independent, commenting and colliding with the power of the poem and throwing it into a variety of textural reliefs. In Howl, the narrator and string quartet are equal partners in an often changing relationship, sometimes united in a close and intense rhythmic world, and sometimes telling similar stories in separate ways.

—Lee Hyla

JOSEPH HAYDN (1732–1809)The Seven Last Words of Christ (NY premiere of version with newly commissioned poem by Mark Strand)

Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, one of the composer’s most profound works, has its genesis in an unusual commission. Haydn himself explained the details of the circumstance in his preface to one of the first editions of the piece:
About 15 years ago I was requested by a canon of Cadiz to compose instrumental music on The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross. It was customary at the Cathedral of Cadiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows, and pillars of the church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp hanging from the center of the roof broke the solemn darkness. At midday, the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced the first of the seven words (or sentences), and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left the pulpit, and prostrated himself before the altar. The interval was filled by music. The bishop then in like manner pronounced the second word, then the third, and so on, the orchestra following on the conclusion of each discourse. My composition was subject to these conditions, and it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting 10 minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits …
The Seven Last Words of Christ comprises an introduction, seven slow movements corresponding to the seven words, and a musical depiction of the earthquake following the crucifixion. It exists in several versions: for orchestra, for orchestra and chorus, and for string quartet by Haydn, as well as a reduction for piano which was approved by the composer. Of these, the arrangement for string quartet has a particular purity and intimacy in which the flexibility and subtlety of the string instruments’ sound serves to enhance the vulnerability of the expression. It is a dark and deeply moving work inspiring searching contemplation. Mostly homophonic, with melodic lines supported by simple accompanying figures, the piece explores and reveals within this elemental texture the emotional resonances inherent in the story of the crucifixion. The music is often stark, barren, and painful, but always overwhelmingly human. Strength and frailty, grief and acceptance, bewilderment and understanding are all expressed with the greatest economy of means and intensity of gesture. The work serves as a meditation on the gravity of tragedy, as well as on the possibilities of hope and redemption. It is music of great weight, as well as great transparency, coupling profound directness of affect with ennobling humility.

In striving to create a performance that was suited to our feelings about the work, as well as to performances outside of a strictly religious venue, we decided to commission poems to be read before each of the slow movements, one poem for each of the words. Our hope was to find a poet whose work shared certain important aesthetic qualities inherent in Haydn’s work. The poems were to be secular rather than specifically religious, based on the universal human qualities evident in the story of the crucifixion and in the music. There needed to be a sense of penetrating insight and of deep feeling, setting up a dialogue between word and music. The poetry of Mark Strand shares with Haydn’s work a surface of relative simplicity betraying underneath a piercing understanding of the human spirit. His is poetry that is quite musical in its cadence, lending itself too well to being read aloud. There is a complete lack of pretense in his poetry, which has the sincerity so immediately apparent in Haydn’s work. Mark Strand is a beautiful and wise artist, and it has been an immense privilege to collaborate with him and to feel part of the genesis of a rich and affecting set of poems.

Although the composite work comprising Haydn’s music and Mark Strand’s poetry forms an integrated artistic whole, with poetry and music symbiotically entwined, the project was originally conceived of with hopes of collaborating with a specific space as a third artistic element, a remarkable edifice in Houston, Texas: the Rothko Chapel. This is an octagonal building completed by the great painter Mark Rothko near the very end of his life housing 14 of his canvases arranged in triptychs and as single panels, all of which are variations on the black monochrome. The paintings evoke a world of great tragedy, and of great beauty, with subtle gradations of the darkness of the canvases inviting the viewer to enter into their world and meditate upon it. Both the Haydn work and the Rothko Chapel achieve great depth of expression with a certain simplicity of means. The blackness of the canvases in the chapel, combined with its light—a soft luminescence coming from a skylight which has a panel hanging underneath it diverting the light around its edges—gives the space a certain similarity to the cathedral in Cadiz where the Haydn was first performed. In fact, an analogy could be made between the relationship of the full orchestral version to the string quartet version of the piece and that between the grand Cadiz cathedral and the sparer Rothko Chapel. The atmosphere of quiet concentration the chapel inspires makes it an ideal setting for a hearing of The Seven Last Words. Our quartet had the opportunity to perform this version of the work twice, with Mark Strand reading, at the chapel in February 2002 through da Camera of Houston; it was a deeply meaningful and powerful experience.

On a personal note, this is quite possibly my most beloved piece of music, and to be involved in bringing it to life in the present moment is always both revelatory and humbling. There is no better confirmation of the great privilege and joy of being a musician.

Ó 2003 Mark Steinberg
“Poem After The Seven Last Words”By Mark Strand


1.
The story of the end, of the last word
of the end, when told, is a story that never ends.
We tell it and retell it—one word, then another
until it seems that no last word is possible,
that none would be bearable. Thus, when the hero
of the story says to himself, as to someone far away,
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do,”
we may feel that he is pleading for us, that we are
the secret life of the story and, as long as his plea
is not answered, we shall be spared. So the story
continues. So we continue. And the end, once more,
becomes the next, and the next after that.

2.
There is an island in the dark, a dreamt-of place
where the muttering wind shifts over the white lawns
and riffles the leaves of trees, the high trees
that are streaked with gold and line the walkways there;
and those already arrived are happy to be the silken
remains of something they were but cannot recall;
they move to the sound of stars, which is also imagined,
but who cares about that; the polished columns they see
may be no more than shafts of sunlight, but for those
who live on and on in the radiance of their remains
this is of little importance. There is an island
in the dark and you will be there, I promise you, you
shall be with me in paradise, in the single season of being,
in the place of forever, you shall find yourself. And there
the leaves will turn and never fall, there the wind
will sing and be your voice as if for the first time.

3.
Someday someone will write a story telling
among other things of a parting between mother
and son, of how she wandered off, of how he vanished
in air. But before that happens, it will describe
how their faces shone with a feeble light and how
the son was moved to say, “Woman, look at your son,”
then to a friend nearby, “Son, look at your mother.”
At which point the writer will put down his pen
and imagine that while those words were spoken
something else happened, something unusual like
a purpose revealed, a secret exchanged, a truth
to which they, the mother and son, would be bound,
but what it was no one would know. Not even the writer.

4.
These are the days when the sky is filled with
the odor of lilac, when darkness becomes desire,
when there is nothing that does not wish to be born.
These are the days of spring when the fate
of the present is a breezy fullness, when the world’s
great gift for fiction gilds even the dirt we walk on.
On such days we feel we could live forever, yet all
the while we know we cannot. This is the doubleness
in which we dwell. The great master of weather
and everything else, if he wishes, can bring forth
a dark of a different kind, one hidden by darkness
so deep it cannot be seen. No one escapes.
Not even the man who saved others, and believed
he was the chosen son. When the dark came down
even he cried out, “Father, father, why have you
forsaken me?” But to his words no answer came.

5.
To be thirsty. To say, “I thirst.”
To close one’s eyes and see the giant world
that is born each time the eyes are closed.
To see one’s death. To see the darkening clouds
as the tragic cloth of a day of mourning. To be the one
mourned. To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover
what one suspected, that the only word in it
is nothing. To try to open one’s eyes, but not to be
able to. To feel the mouth burn. To feel the sudden
presence of what, again and again, was not said.
To translate it and have it remain unsaid. To know
at last that nothing is more real than nothing.

6.
“It is finished,” he said. You could hear him say it,
the words almost a whisper, then not even that,
but an echo so faint it seemed no longer to come
from him, but from elsewhere. This was his moment,
his final moment. “It is finished,” he said into a vastness
that led to an even greater vastness, and yet all of it
within him. He contained it all. That was the miracle,
to be both large and small in the same instant, to be
like us, but more so, then finally to give up the ghost,
which is what happened. And from the storm that swirled
in his wake a formal nakedness took shape, the truth
of disguise and the mask of belief were joined forever.

7.
Back down these stairs to the same scene,
to the moon, the stars, the night wind. Hours pass
and only the harp off in the distance and the wind
moving through it. And soon the sun’s gray disk,
darkened by clouds, sailing above. And beyond,
as always, the sea of endless transparence, of utmost
calm, a place of constant beginning that has within it
what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand
has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart.
To that place, to the keeper of that place, I commit myself.

Ó 2001 by Mark Strand

Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. Within a few years of its formation, the quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award; and in 1996 the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center invited them to be the inaugural members of Chamber Music Society Two, a program that has become a coveted distinction for chamber groups and individuals ever since. The quartet had its first European tour in 1997, and was honored in the United Kingdom with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. That debut recital was at London’s Wigmore Hall, and the quartet has continued its warm relationship with Wigmore, appearing there regularly and serving as the hall’s quartet-in-residence in the 2000–2001 season.

In recent seasons the quartet has traveled widely, appearing in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The quartet has performed in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House. The quartet has participated in summer festivals such as Aspen, the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, the Edinburgh Festival, the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, the Taos School of Music, and the Caramoor Festival.

In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in both very old and very new music. It has performed many musical works pre-dating the string quartet as a medium, among them madrigals of Gesualdo, fantasias of Purcell, and secular vocal works of Josquin. The quartet has also worked closely with some of the most important composers of our time, including Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Steven Mackey, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. The quartet has commissioned works from Wuorinen, Adolphe, Mackey, David Horne, and Gabriela Frank. The quartet celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2002 by commissioning 10 composers to write companion pieces for selections from Bach’s The Art of Fugue, the result of which was an electrifying and wide-ranging single concert program. The quartet has also worked with the celebrated poet Mark Strand, commissioning poetry from him to accompany works of Haydn and Webern.

The Brentano Quartet has been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, pianist Richard Goode, and pianist Mitsuko Uchida. The quartet enjoys an especially close relationship with Uchida, appearing with her on stages in the US, Europe, and Japan.

The quartet has recorded the Opus 71 quartets of Haydn, and has also recorded a Mozart recording for Aeon Records, consisting of the K. 464 quartet and the K. 593 quintet, with violist Hsin-Yun Huang. In the area of newer music, the quartet has released a recording of the music of Steven Mackey on Albany Records, and has also recorded the music of Bruce Adolphe, Chou Wen-chung, and Charles Wuorinen.

In 1998, cellist Nina Lee joined the quartet, succeeding founding member Michael Kannen. The following season the quartet became the first resident string quartet at Princeton University. The quartet’s duties at the university are wide-ranging, including performances at least once a semester, as well as workshops with graduate composers, coaching undergraduates in chamber music, and assisting in other classes at the music department.

The quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,” the intended recipient of his famous love confession.

Mark Strand, Speaker
Mark Strand was born on Canada’s Prince Edward Island on April 11, 1934. He received a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College in Ohio in 1957 and attended Yale University, where he was awarded the Cook Prize and the Bergin Prize. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1959, Strand spent a year studying at the University of Florence on a Fulbright fellowship. In 1962 he received his master’s degree from the University of Iowa.
Strand is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Man and Camel (Knopf, 2006); Blizzard of One (1998), which won the Pulitzer Prize; Dark Harbor (1993); The Continuous Life (1990); Selected Poems (1980); The Story of Our Lives (1973); and Reasons for Moving (1968). He has also published two books of prose, several volumes of translation (of works by Rafael Alberti and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, among others), several monographs on contemporary artists, and three books for children. He has edited a number of volumes, including 100 Great Poems of the 20th Century (W. W. Norton, 2005), The Golden Ecco Anthology (1994), The Best American Poetry 1991, and Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers (with Charles Simic, 1976).
Strand’s honors include the Bollingen Prize, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the 1974 Edgar Allen Poe Prize from The Academy of American Poets, and a Rockefeller Foundation Award. He has also received fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation.
Mark Strand has served as poet laureate of the United States and is a former chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. He currently teaches English and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York.