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Goback Goback
2003
baritone
flute doubling piccolo
oboe doubling english horn
clarinet doubling bass clarinet
piano
harp
percussion
bass drum, boobams, flexatone, 3 small gongs, hi-hat, log drum, marimba,
3 small suspended cymbals, tambourine, tom-tom, large triangle, vibraphone, 3 woodblocks
string quintet
duration 45''
commissioned by Paul and Catherine Buttenweiser for Collage New Music
first performance:
David Kravitz with Collage, cond. David Hoose
Paine Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge / March 29, 2003
RECORDING
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cd or digital download of complete work available at amazon.com cdbaby.com and iTunes |
| SCORE From 'The Greenock Dialogues' O Why Am I So Bright The Visit Imagine A Forest Falling Into the Sea Enter A Cloud Dear Bryan Wynter Loch Thom PROGRAM NOTE This work is about standing at the midpoint of life and reassessing. W.S. Graham's poetry can seem elliptical on first acquaintance. In fact it is quite direct but it uses jarring shifts of time and perspective. I have arranged eight of his poems into a three-part shape. The first three songs are concerned directly with childhood; one—From The Greenock Dialogues—with the conjuring up of ghosts of remembered people and places; and two with nightmarish scenarios; O Why Am I So Bright is a galloping song of freedom cut off by rejection, The Visit tells of a nighttime encounter with a dark figure, perhaps Death. The next three songs explore the body and the mind in transport, and in the here-and-now, but with a surreal, dreamlike quality. Imagine A Forest entraps the reader (or listener) in the very fabric of the poem; forcing him or her to become an actor in the poem's narrative–an uncomfortable and alarming place to be. This is a thoroughly earthy poem, set in a dark forest. Falling Into the Sea, the next, watery, song, is again about submersion; this time underwater rather than in a poem. Enter A Cloud is a tour-de-force of a text inspired by sky, wind, and air in which a welter of reveries are thrown out and connected in swirls of language. The final two poems are about loss; they are those of an adult looking forward and backward pragmatically toward death in Dear Bryan Wynter and longingly toward childhood in Loch Thom. As you would expect in a work where words and images keep folding back in on themselves, this music contains numerous echoes, returns, and connections. Some of the more noticeable ones are: 1) cluster chords signify the presence of ghosts. 2) the clarinet runs prominently through the first three (childhood) songs. 3) the overall direction of registers is downward e.g. the little solo which breaks the stanzas in Loch Thom is heard first on violin, then lower on viola, then lower still on cello; Falling Into the Sea is made of overlapping descending woodwind lines; the woodwind doublings get gradually lower as piccolo, oboe, and clarinet are left behind and; replaced by flute, english horn, and bass clarinet. 4) the; piano chords underpinning Falling Into the Sea are taken from halfway through The Visit. 5) the oboe ritornello in Imagine A Forest returns as the poet reaches the Great Kelp Wood at the close of Falling Into the Sea. 6) the simple descending triadic harmony introduced in The Visit becomes plainer and stiller as the work continues. 7) the last two songs each contain a passage of ascending note flurries; one depicting wind, one depicting grouse rising into the air. The title Goback Goback is taken from the grouse's call in the final poem and works on many levels; in the poet's memory it is a sound from childhood, for the poet's ‘ghost’, revisiting the loch it is a warning to return to the present, for the poet's adult being it is a desire to reexperience lost childhood—a warning, an encouragement, in invitation, a dare, a requirement, a necessity, an impossibility. REVIEWS But this time around, there was some new music at the end of the program that really sounded new. . . Kravitz was back, and in fuller voice than ever, for Goback Goback. . . And Vores has somehow found the perfect "voice" to open up the poems—the rushing harmonic energy of minimalism, but applied to the pastoral English tradition. The results were often transporting, and were suffused with an intuitive connection to Graham's text—a long series of meditations on the approach of death, viewed as if from a dream of mid-life. And Vores's seemingly limitless gift for orchestration drew an astonishing number of moods from his ensemble—which he needed to match Graham's constantly-morphing poetry, in which mind moves through and into landscape at will . . . By the time Kravitz sang the final verse (which explains the odd title), I was wondering whether this wasn't the best piece of new music I'd heard in these parts for some time. Probably. Thomas Garvey • The Hub Review full review • Vores’s Goback Goback is a setting of eight poems by the almost forgotten 20th-century Cornwall poet (born in Scotland) W. S. Graham. These are works that deal with the contrary pulls of returning to a ghostly childhood and trying to live more fully in the present. Several of the poems remind me of the folk songs Mahler uses in his Des Knaben Wunderhorn cycle: "How would you like to be killed," says the mysterious voice at the beginning of The Visit. The title is the call of the grouse in the last poem, both a seduction and a warning. Goback Goback also begins with a harp, and here the bardic element is most explicit, reinforced by strumming strings, staccato beats, and snaky, slithery winds. In a marvelous interlude between the second and third sections, plucked cello (Joel Moerschel) and rhythmic bass (Jim Orleans) dissolve into ravishingly lyrical strings. Vores’s striking music conjures up the ghost worlds of Schumann, or Mahler, or Benjamin Britten, only on hallucinogens. "Imagine a forest,/A real forest," another poem begins, and the music wants to surround us in dark woods, submerge us in a fathomless sea, disintegrate us into an ephemeral cloud. And it captures Graham’s creepy comedy (Dear Bryan Winter begins, "This is only a note/To say how sorry I am/You died"). Baritone David Kravitz was the eloquent singer, conveying the sense that he knew what lurked behind the words and letting us hear every syllable. David Hoose led every piece with passion and precision. And the playing seemed flawless. It’s a rare new-music event that makes me want to hear each piece over again. And again. Lloyd Schwartz • The Boston Phoenix • The effect of Goback Goback was to be flung into a huge, pullulating Amazonian lushness. With only a few instruments at his disposal, Vores gave you the sense that he had an infinite number of orchestrational palettes at hand. . . This is not a composer for whom ideas—or ways of expressing them—are slow in coming. Richard Buell • The Boston Globe TEXTS From the Greenock Dialogues O Greenock, Greenock, I never will Get back to you, but here I am, The boy made good into a ghost Which I will send along your streets Tonight as the busy nightshifts Hammer and spark their welding lights. I pull this skiff I made myself Across the midnight firth Between Greenock and Kilkreggan. My blades as they feather discard The bright drops and the poor word Which will always drown unheard. Ah the little whirlpools go Curling away for a moment back Into my wake. Brigit. Cousin Brigit Mooney, are you still there On the Old Custom House shore? You need not answer that, my dear. And she is there with all the wisps And murmurs in their far disguise. Brigit, help with the boat up Up over the shingle to the high Tide mark. You've hardly changed, only A little through the world's eye. Take my hand this new night And we'll go up to Cartsburn Street Burn's Mary sleeps fine in Inverkip Street far from Afton. Brigit, take me with you. Come, step over The gunwale. I think, it seems we're here On the dirty pebbles of my home Town Greenock where somewhere Burn's Mary Sleeps and ghosts go Still. O Why am I So Bright O why am I so bright Flying in the night? Why am I so fair Flying through the air? Will you let me in After all I've done? We see you as you go Across the fields of snow. We will not let you in. Never. Never. Never. The Visit How would you like to be killed or are You in disguise the one to take Me back? I don't want to go back As I am now. I'm not dressed For the sudden wind out of the West. Also sometimes I get lost. If I stay on for a bit and try Upside-down to speak and cry HELP ME, HELP ME, will anything Happen? Will I begin to sing? What a fine get-up you have on, Mister, if that is your entering name. How did you get through the window-frame To stand beside me? I am a simple Boy from Greenock who could kill You easily if it was not you. Please tell me if you come on business. You are too early. I have to kiss My dear and another dear and the natural Objects as well as my writing table. Goodnight. I will mend the window. Thank you for giving me time To kiss the lovely living game. So he went away Without having touched me. He looked at me with courage. His head was a black orange. Imagine a Forest Imagine a forest A real forest You are walking in it and it sighs Round you where you go in a deep Ballad on the border of a time You have seemed to walk in before. It is nightfall and you go through Trying to find between the twittering Shades the early starlight edge Of the open moor land you know. I have set you here and it is not a dream I put you through. Go on between The elephant bark of those beeches Into that lightening, almost glade. And he has taken My word and gone Through his own Ettrick darkening Upon himself and he's come across A glinted knight lying dying On needles under a high tree. Ease his visor open gently To reveal whatever white, encased Face will ask out at you who It is you are or if you will Finish him off. His eyes are open. Imagine he does not speak. Only His beard moving against the metal Signs that he would like to speak. Imagine a room Where you are home Taking your boots off from the wood In that deep ballad very not A dream and the fire noisily Kindling up and breaking its sticks. Do not imagine I put you there For nothing. I put you through it There in that holt of words between The bearded liveoaks and the beeches For you to meet a man alone Slipping out of whatever cause He thought he lay there dying for. Hang up the ballad behind the door. You are home but you are about To not fight hard enough and die In a no less desolate dark wood Where a stranger shall never enter. Imagine a forest A real forest. Falling into the Sea Breathing water is easy If you put your mind to it. The little difficulty Of the first breath Is soon over. You Will find everything right. Keep your eyes open As you go fighting down But try to keep it easy As you meet the green Skylight rising up Dying to let you through. Then you will seem to want To stand like a sea-horse In the new suspension. Don't be frightened. Breathe Deeply and you will go down Blowing your silver worlds. Now you go down turning Slowly over from fathom To fathom even remembering Unexpected small Corners of the dream You have been in. Now What has happened to you? You have arrived on the sea Floor and a lady comes out From the Great Kelp Wood And gives you some scones and a cup Of tea and asks you If you come here often. Enter a Cloud Gently disintegrate me Said nothing at all. Is there still time to say Said I myself lying In a bower of bramble Into which I have fallen. Look through my eyes up At blue with not anything We could ever have arranged Slowly taking place. Above the spires of fox Gloves and above the bracken Tops with their young heads Recognizing the wind, The armies of the empty Blue press me further Into Zennor Hill. If I half-close my eyes The spiked light leaps in And I am here as near Happy as I will get In the sailing afternoon. Enter a cloud. Between The head of Zennor and Gurnard's Head the long Marine horizon makes A blue wall or is it A distant table-top Or the far-off simple sea. Enter a cloud. the cloud's Changing shape is crossing Slowly an inch Above the line of the sea. Now nearly equidistant Between Zennor and Gurnard's Head, an elongated White anvil is sailing. And proceeds with no idea Of destination along The sea bearing changing Messages. Jean in London, Lifting a cup, looking Abstractedly out through Her Hampstead glass will never Be caught by your new shape Above the chimneys. Jean, Jean, do you not see This cloud has been thought of On Zennor Hill. The cloud is going beyond What I can see or make. Over up-country maybe Albert Strick stops and waves Caught in the middle of teeling Broccoli for the winter. The cloud is not there yet. From Gurnard's Head to Zennor Head the level line Crosses my eyes lying On buzzing Zennor Hill. The cloud is only a wisp And gone behind the Head. . . Thank you. And for your applause. It has been a pleasure. I have never enjoyed speaking more. May I also thank the real ones Who have made this possible. First, the cloud itself. And now Gurnard's Head and Zennor Head. Also recognize How I have been helped By Jean and Albert Strick (He is a real man.) And good words like brambles, Bower, spiked, fox, anvil, teeling. The bees you heard are from A hive owned by my friend Garfield down there below In the house by Zennor Church. The good blue sun is pressing Me into Zennor Hill. Gently disintegrate me Said nothing at all. Dear Bryan Wynter This is only a note To say how sorry I am You died. You will realize What a position it puts Me in. I couldn't really Have died for you if so I were inclined. The carn Foxglove here on the wall Outside your first house Leans with me standing In the Zennor wind. Anyhow how are things? Are you still somewhere With your long legs And twitching smile under Your blue hat walking Across a place? Or am I greedy to make you up Again out of memory? Are you there at all? I would like to think You were all right And not unhappy or bored. Speaking to you and not Knowing if you are there Is not too difficult. Do you want anything? Where shall I send something? Rice-wine, meanders, paintings By your contemporaries? Or shall I send a kind Of news of no time Leaning against the wall Outside your old house. The house and the whole moor Is flying in the mist Bryan, I would be obliged If you would scout things out For me. Although I am not Just ready to start out. I am trying to be better, Which will make you smile Under your blue hat. I know I make a symbol Of the foxglove on the wall. It is because it knows you. Loch Thom Just for the sake of recovering I walked back from forty-six Quick years of age wanting to see, And managed not to trip or stumble To find Loch Thom and turned round To see the stretch of my childhood Before me. Here is the loch. The same Long-beaked cry curls across The heather-edges of the water held Between the hills a boyhood's walk Up from Greenock. It is the morning. And I am here with my mammy's Bramble jam scones in my pocket. The Firth is miles and I have come Back to find Loch Thom maybe In this light does not recognize me. This is a lonely freshwater loch. No farms on the edge. Only Heather grouse-moor stretching Down to Greenock Or stretching away across Into the blue moors of Ayrshire. And almost I am back again Wading the heather down to the edge To sit. The minnows go by in shoals Like iron-filings in the shallows. My mother is dead. My father is dead And all the trout I used to know Leaping from their sad rings are dead. I drop my crumbs into the shallow Weed for the minnows and pinheads. You see that I will have to rise And turn round and get back where My running age will slow for a moment To let me on. it is a colder Stretch of water than I remember. The curlew's cry travelling still Kills me fairly. In front of me The grouse flurry and settle. GOBACK GOBACK GOBACK FAREWELL LOCH THOM. W.S. Graham (1918–1986) |