Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
TAVENER The Lamb CONTEXT & BACKGROUND • • • • • • • • • • Tavener’s music became increasingly popular in the final years of the 20th C The performance of his song for Athene that brought the funeral of Princess Diana to its moving close in 1997 resulted in him becoming one of the best known British composers of contemporary art music The Lamb is a SACRED song Written for 4 PART CHOIR Set to a 18th C poem by William Blake Tavener wrote the work in 1982 for his nephew’s 3rd birthday and records that ‘it was composed from 7 notes in the afternoon’ In the poem Blake appears to speak as a child (‘I a child’ br17) but in reality the poem deals with the destiny of the human spirit The subject of the setting is Jesus (referred in the Bible as ‘the lamb of God’) who ‘became a child’ (br16) Because of this reference to the birth of Christ, The Lamb was first sung at a carol service in Winchester Cathedral on 22 Dec 1982 and was broadcast 2 days later as part of the famous Christmas Eve carol service from King’s college, Cambridge It is also sometimes sung as an anthem at the end of the Anglican service of Evensong NAM 32 CD3 Track 10 STRUCTURE • • • • • Br1-10 = 1st verse of poem Br11-20 = 2nd verse of poem Although Tavener uses a fuller texture in the 2nd verse the music is essentially the same – STROPHIC The ear tends to notice that the melody of bars 1-2 returns in bars 7-10 giving the impression that verse one is a TERNARY structure (A B A1) in which section B is formed by bars 3-6 This is then repeated in verse 2 (A = br1112, B = br13-16, A1 = br17-20) TAVENER The Lamb RHYTHM and WORD SETTING • • • • • • • • There is NO TIME SIGNATURE Although some bars have a distinctly 4/4 feel others are much freer As Tavener indicates at the start the rhythm is always guided by the words and not by a regular pulse imposed on those words as occurs in NAM 39 for example The barlines simply mark the ends of the lines in the poem, being given as reference points for rehearsals (and for exams!) The word setting is largely SYLLABIC although occasionally 2 notes are slurred together drawing attention to important words The combination of outward simplicity and underlying sophistication reflects the dual nature of the text – an innocent little lamb but a lamb who was slain as a sacrifice for the sins of the world This explains the bitter sweet dissonances, particularly the Am9 chord that appears on the words such, all, Lamb and know in br710 (and all 4 chords with a TENUTO dash in br17-20) Tavener refers to it as his ‘joy-sorrow’ chord and it certainly adds pathos to these passages NAM 32 CD3 Track 10 MELODY and TEXTURE • • • • • • • • • • • • • • The opening bar is MONOPHONIC and uses just 4 notes of the G major scale Giving the question it poses a very childlike sense of innocence Tavener constructs the entire work from this bar The addition of the altos in br2 creates a 2 part HOMOPHONIC texture – we would describe this as HOMORHYTHMIC since both parts have the same rhythm Alto part is an INVERSION of the soprano The soprano part is in G major Its mirror image in the alto is in Eb major The simultaneous use of a melody and its own mirror image is used to express the rhetorical question asked of the lamb – ‘Dost thou know who made thee? – the only possible answer is shown to be reflected in the question itself The monophonic melody in br3 starts with the soprano pitches of br2 (G major) and ends with the alto pitches of br2 (Eb major) – these are the ‘seven notes’ mentioned before Br4 is a RETROGRADE version of br3 (i.e. the pitches are used in reverse order) allowing the music to return to G major Br5-6 the long melody of br3-4 is accompanied by a MIRROR INVERSION (see attached example) Notice how the manipulation allows soprano and alto to exchange 3 note cells of the pitches between the surrounding Gs In br7-10 the opening melody is presented 4 times in homophonic texture in which all 4 parts are heard for the 1st time Br 10 is an AUGMENTATION of br9 – and it gives this last repetition of the bar a sense of finality for the end of verse 1 TAVENER The Lamb HARMONY and TONALITY • • • • • • • • • • The 4 pitches in br1 all come from the key G MJAOR and the phrase begins and ends on G Bar 2 is BITONAL – the sopranos stay in G major while the inversion of their melody in the alto part suggests Eb major However the resulting clashes are not highly dissonant and the 2 keys are reconciled by starting and ending on the same note G The phrases in br3-4 and 5-6 are similarly anchored to G as starting and ending notes However new light is thrown on the opening melody when it is given 4 part harmonization in br7-10 – all notes are from the AEOLIAN MODE on E (E-F#-G-A-BC-D-E) Every note of this mode is contained in these bars There is no sharpening of the 7th degree in the dominant chords (the penultimate chord in each of these bars) and so all the cadences are MODAL Tavener has deliberately exploited the ambiguity created by an idea based on just 4 pitches to suggest MAJOR KEYS, BITONALITY and MODALITY within the space of ust 10 bars Modal writing for unaccompanied 4 part choir might seem to hark back to a much older era as might Taveners conventional approach to his ‘joy-sorrow’ chord which he treats as a double suspension with the dissonance prepared and resolved in the soprano and alto parts each time it occurs And yet the resulting rich succession of 9th and 7th chords is not like early music, nor is his use of CONSECUTIVE 5ths between the soprano and tenor on the word ‘tender’ (and in 7 similar places) NAM 32 CD3 Track 10 MELODY and TEXTURE contd…. • • • • • Verse 2 – br11-20 is simply a rescoring of verse 1 Instead of unison sopranos the 1st bar is sung by the full choir in octaves giving weight to the instructional tone of the words (‘Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee’) Octaves appear for the monophonic statement of br13-14, while pairs of voices in octaves (sop/tenor and alto/bass) are used instead of just sopranos and altos in br12 and 15-16 The setting of the final 4 lines of the 2nd verse is exactly the same as the setting of the final 4 lines of the 1st verse The devotional style of the music arises in part from the very restricted range of the soprano’s melody (an augmented 5th, from Eb to Bnat as well as from the limited dynamic range (pp to mp) • The resulting mix of old and new is typical of the POSTMODERNISTIC STYLE of this piece while the repetitive nature of br7-10 and 17-20 suggests the influence of MINIMALISM TAVENER The Lamb NAM 32 CD3 Track 10