Mitternachtslieder

Program Note by the Composer

Composed at a time of personal stress, Mitternachtslieder ("Midnight Songs") was completed in Baltimore, Maryland on July 12, 1979. The five songs -- connected by brief instrumental interludes -- are set to texts by the German pre-Expressionist poet Georg Trakl. In order, they are "Nahe des Todes" (from Trakl's three Rosenkranzlieder), "Die Ratten," "Fohn," "Trompeten," and "Untergang."

It was Peter Maxwell Davies' setting of a Trakl prose poem that first brought to my attention the work of this extraordinary poet, and with it ultimately came a fascination with the entire German Expressionist movement. My first attempt at a Trakl setting came in the mid-1970s, but I abandoned the project due to what I considered my inability at that time to do justice to the poet's work. My attraction to the poems increased further as I read of Trakl's tortured life, and I found that, by 1979, they had supplied too great an impetus for composition to be ignored.

Mitternachtslieder is music in which the spirit of Alban Berg walks with some independence. Berg's scores, particularly Wozzeck and Der Wein, have a strong sense of Trakl-like imagery and mood (even though neither is based upon a Trakl text; of the major Second Veinnese School composers, only Webern actually set Trakl to music, though composers as disparate as Hindemith and Knussen were to later). Thus, there are no quotations from Berg's music, though there is an intentional desire to evoke a certain Bergian sound world in Mitternachtslieder, particularly in my score's use of anagrams and number symbols. Just as my first string quartet can be viewed as an homage to Bartok and my Surma Ritornelli to Varèse, so too is Mitternachtslieder a conscious "omaggio" to Berg and musical Expressionism.

Mitternachtslieder is scored for an ensemble consisting of oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet and piccolo clarinet), trumpets in C and D (one player), piano and celesta (one player), percussion (two players), violin, viola, violoncello, and contrabass. All of the players are, in addition, required to play one or more percussion instruments during the work. It is dedicated to baritone Leslie Guinn, for whom it was composed and who gave the first performance of the work on April 5, 1980 with the Contemporary Directions Ensemble under Stephen Osmond.

Christopher Rouse

© 1979 by Christopher Rouse
These program notes can be reproduced free of charge with the following credit:
Reprinted by kind permission of Christopher Rouse