- - - DISC - - - Susan Narucki Talea Ensemble Poems of Sheer Nothingness: Vocal Music of Aaron Helgeson ℗© Aaron Helgeson (ASCAP), 2015 All Rights Reserved. innova 901 - - - TRACK LISTING AND CREDITS - - - Poems of Sheer Nothingness: Vocal Music of Aaron Helgeson Aaron Helgeson (b. 1982) 1 - 5 Poems of sheer nothingness (2012-2013)1 37:22 Farai un vers de dreyt nïen 7:54 Una chansoneta fera 6:09 Bem degra de chantar tener 11:55 No sap chanter qui so non di 3:49 A penas sai commensar 7:45 6 Notes on a page (of Sappho) (2009)2 16:07 TOTAL 53:39 Susan Narucki, soprano Talea Ensemble James Baker, conductor Barry J Crawford, flute1 Tara Helen O’Connor, flute2 Stuart Breczinski, oboe2 Marianne Gythfeldt, clarinet1 Rane Moore, bass clarinet2 Miranda Cuckson, violin1 Sunghae Anna Lim, violin2 Elizabeth Weisser, viola2 Chris Gross, cello1,2 Alex Lipowski, percussion2 Ian Antonio, percussion2 Matthew Gold, percussion2 Oren Fader, guitar2 June Han, harp2 Ning Yu, piano1 Producer: Aaron Helgeson Engineer: Ryan Streber Design: Denise Burt Innova Director: Philip Blackburn Innova Operations Director: Chris Campbell Innova Publicist: Steve McPherson Recorded at Oktaven Studios (Yonkers, New York) on June 16-17, 20141 and November 24, 20142 Funded in part through grants from the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Oberlin College, UC San Diego, and the Harry and Alice Eiler Foundation Special thanks to Roger Reynolds, Rand Steiger, Philippe Manoury, the University of Toulouse, Anne Carson, Nicole Aragi, Allison Jakobovic, Cathy Strauss, Alice Teyssier, Jonathan Hepfer, Sharon Harms, Matthew Barnson, Ross Karre, Christine Herd, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Jessica Slaven Innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation © Aaron Helgeson (ASCAP), 2015. All Rights Reserved. - - - COMMENTARY - - - Whispering Someone Else’s Nothings a conversation with Aaron Helgeson and Susan Narucki AH: I remember a sunny day in San Diego. A friend was selling piles and piles of books out on his front lawn. The birds were chirping outside. There was a light breeze licking the tree branches. I was digging through a box of poetry and stumbled across an old book of Occitan troubadour song texts. I had never seen the language printed before, and was taken by the look of it. I bought the book for a dollar, and took it home where it sat on the shelf for a couple weeks. When I finally cracked it open, it fell haphazardly on a poem by Guillaume de Poitiers that began in a very strange way. “I’ll make a poem of sheer nothingness. Not of me, nor of any other. Not of love, nor of youth, nor of anything else. Because it was composed while dreaming on a horse.” It was a baffling introduction (to an otherwise completely normal love song) that was about the process of writing song itself. Thumbing through the book, I found more of these bizarre preludes, all of them in verse. Some were explanations of the poet’s craft. Some were apologies for poor rhyme. Some were pained second thoughts about singing. Some were warnings for those who would try and follow suit. All of them seemed both timeless and utterly contemporary. This was just after the premiere of Notes on a page (of Sappho), and there seemed to be an interesting correspondence between the two texts. They spoke to my own feelings over the years about vocal music, but they were also a window into a much older struggle to create a very personal music, a music that is now lost forever. SN: How did you decide to set Anne Carson’s translation of the Sappho fragments in Notes on a page? AH: Well, I discovered Carson's translations in her book If not, winter back in 2003, and wanted to work with them ever since. What's unusual about it is that it's not just a translation of the words. It's a translation of the experience of looking at the fragments themselves — faded text on scraps of papyrus, a few painted phrases among a group of dancing figures on remnants of an urn, isolated examples of the subjunctive uttered by ancient grammarians. The language Carson uses to translate these fragments is both plain and modern. Here we have Sappho (an ancient Greek poet whose work barely survives) on one end, and Carson on the other trying to make sense of it more than two-and-a-half millennia later. There’s no attempt to complete anything or dress it up. It’s simply a record of reading another record. That became the model for Notes on a page, and for Poems of Sheer Nothingness really...sparse settings that transcribe my own experience of reading these fragments and imagining how their music would sound in a contemporary context. SN: Carson situates the text on the page in a very particular manner and evokes a world that we can neither see or sense. But we are connected to that world. The experience of being human binds us through time, as if with a thick cord that we cannot cut. Sappho speaks to that so eloquently. I could never describe Notes on a page as sparse, though! To me, it seems ripe and full — even the silences are lush. But it is full of delicious contradictions. The music is never truly at rest. Amid so much color and texture in the instrumental and vocal writing, I find a sense of urgency, not unlike the experience of trying to crystallize a moment of time — "remembering" a memory, if you will. That speaks to me of Carson's translation of a translation, an ephemeral construction that nonetheless seems to have inherent power. AH: Right, we’re never truly in silence. We know that from John Cage, of course, and there are certainly silences in this music that behave like he intended — that reveal sounds which were previously taken for granted (a barely perceptible rumble in the bass drum, a slight panting sound in the flute, a long drawn bow on resonant metal). There are other silences, though, that activate the imagination. Silences where we fill in the gaps left by the music. Carson’s translation leaves us all sorts of gaps, and they allow us to participate spontaneously in the creation of a poetry that is partly Sappho’s and partly our own. I wanted that to be true of the music also. We hear a glimpse of harmony or a familiar sound and it reminds us of something we’ve heard before in other music or even our daily life, and the silence that follows allows us to continue that daydream for a little while. This all has to do with listening to the music, though. I suppose it’s a very different situation to perform it. SN: Yes, that's true. I wonder how many people are aware of the experience of having their imagination activated, in real time, by sound. Musicians are accustomed to that, of course. We apprehend our location within musical form and structure, but some sounds evoke a world that's just beyond music. The juxtaposition of the two can be disconcerting, but it can also allow a magical environment to emerge - something unexpected and alive. And we are not even speaking about the impact that text has. I sometimes marvel at what happens when we hear words sung. Quite ordinary words become transformed, regardless of whether or not we're following the trajectory of a narrative. The words are imbued with meaning - saturated, really. They're captured and contained within the singing voice, but an endless array of interpretive choices present themselves in real time. I suppose this is why singing still fascinates me and why I am interested in music that allows space for this process to happen. AH: You know, there was a time when I used to do a lot of acting. I was always drawn toward characters who were heavily involved in the stage action but said very little, like what you find in the plays of Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, or Anton Chekhov for that matter. The challenge for the actor was to create a full and continuous life for the character that would produce those few words at just the right time. I wonder if singing this music must feel a little like that. For instance, in the third and fifth songs of Poems of sheer nothingness, there are long stretches where you’re completely silent...and then the singing picks up almost exactly where you left it. SN: Exactly. The text generates its own life. And it's a life far beyond what is uttered. I certainly see that in all five songs. In the third song, for instance, the voice doesn’t even begin until well into the piece. We hear unearthly, icy string harmonics repeated over and over with subtle variation. The combination of the sounds and the repetition create a dramatic tension that is nearly unbearable. It's no wonder that when the voice finally enters, the duration of the sung notes is short, the words are often cut apart, continually interrupted by rests, as if the singer is oppressed, gasping for air. After the vocal part is finished, we return to the fragile world of the string harmonics. One could imagine a camera, zooming in very slowly, to a solitary person plodding through a frozen landscape and then, pulling back until the person is just a speck on the horizon. In the fifth song, it’s the voice that activates the environment. The song begins with the words “I suffer to know (or manage) to begin” (a penas sai comensar), but "suffer" is not an accurate description - there is no heaviness in the piece. To me, the setting speaks to the ephemeral nature of singing. Each line of the poem only has three or four words full of long, held notes. We never hear the lines intact. They're always interrupted by a gentle, fragile sonic landscape that emerges and decays. It's almost as if the singer becomes lost in singing, lost in listening. As if there is no discernible boundary between the thought that sparks the act of singing and the song itself. Of course, this is what these songs reveal to me. There are many more layers of complexity here, including the fact that the poems are sung in Occitan. AH: Yes, the language adds another stratum of meaning. There’s a sensuality to the sound of Occitan that’s unavoidable, and its antiquated nature adds a coat of thin dust to the music. And there are also puzzles hidden in these texts. In the second song, the line E far l’ai tal que sen sela could be translated as "I'll make it such of sense concealed" or maybe something even simpler like "I'll conceal its sense." But there are secrets here that you can only really access when the song is sung in its original tongue. For example, the word l'ai ("it") is a homophone with the word lai, which itself has double meaning as the noun "plaintive song" and adverb "to her." Beyond that, the word sela (when spoken) can be heard either as the verb "conceal" or the possessive pronoun "hers." So, when it's uttered out loud, the line simultaneously reveals another hidden meaning: "I'll make her song such that its sense is hers." SN: In fact, that's what we're talking about - illuminating the "sense" through performance. The only constant is that it's never the same. - - - EPIGRAPH - - -                                     If music could speak to language, what would it say? When words encounter other sounds, what secrets do they keep from each other? How can they talk at all when one seems concrete and the other abstract? When one seems so close to meaning as to be indistinguishable, and the other seems so far from it that it constantly threatens to disappear into the fog of ineffability? Over such a great distance, what kind of poetry would music write to the words it sets? Would it ask forgiveness? As a preliminary repentance? An apology for singing? Perhaps. For we who make song must remember that we sing to the ears of others.That the price of being listened to is being heard. That we must be careful when we whisper nothings, for they are not always so sweet as we'd wish them to be. — Aaron Helgeson - - - POEMS TEXT Poems of sheer nothingness from Occitan troubadour texts (ca. 1100-1300 A.D.) translated by Aaron Helgeson (b. 1982 A.D.) I. Farai un vers de dreyt nïen: non er de mi ni d’autra gen, non er d’amor ni de joven, ni de ren au; Qu’enans fo trobatz en durmen sobre chevau. - Guillame de Poitiers (1071 - 1126 A.D.) I’ll make a poem of sheer nothingness: not of me nor of any other, not of love nor of youth, nor of anything else; Because it was composed while dreaming on a horse. II. Una chansoneta fera voluntiers, laner’a dir, don tem que m’er a murir, e far l’ai tal que sen sela. Ben la poira leu entendre si tot s’es en aital rima. Li mot seran descubert Alques de razon deviza. - Raimbaut d’Aurenga (1147 - 1173 A.D.) I’ll make a little song willingly, simple to say, but in doing so I am afraid to death, so I’ll make it such of sense concealed. Surely she’ll understand it even though always it’s in rhyme. Many things will be revealed to her desired senses. III. Be.m degra de chantar tener, quar a chan coven alegriers, e mi destrenh tant cossiriers que.m fa de totas partz doler. Remembran mon greu temps passat, esgardan lo prezent forsat, e cossiran l’avenidor, que per totz ai razon que plor. - Guiraut Riquier (1230 - 1292 A.D.) I should indeed from singing refrain, for a song needs cheer, but torment fills my body so that throughout my being there is pain. Remembering my grief in times past, thinking on the conflicted present, and considering the future, in all these thoughts I weep. IV. No sap chantar qui so non di, ni vers trobar qui motz no fa, ni conois de rima co.s va, si razo non enten en si; Mas lo mieus chans comens’aissi: com plus l’auziretz, mais valra. - Jaufré Rudel de Blaye (1113 - 1170 A.D.) He cannot sing whose song does not sound, nor verse compose who not much says, nor know his rhyme to place, if sense he does not know so well. But my own song begins thus: the more you listen, the better it will be. V. A penas sai comensar Un vers que volh far leuger, E si n’ai pensat des er Que.l fezes de tal razo Que l’entenda tota gens E qu’el fass’a leu chantar; Qu’eu.l fatz per pla deportar. - Giraut de Borneil (1138 - 1215 A.D.) I suffer to begin a poem that I want to make light, although I’ve pondered since yesterday how to write with such reason that all may understand it and that it may be easy to sing; as I do it purely for pleasure. For more information, visit: www.aaronhelgeson.com www.susannarucki.net www.talea.org www.innova.mu