Reflections on Melissa Dunphy’s Farewell Angelina (2019)
Farewell, Angelina was included on the recital-film project, I take the long way there. For more information about this program, check out my projects.
Bob Dylan (b.1941) & Joan Baez (b.1941)
“Farewell, Angelina” was first recorded by poet, musician, and composer Bob Dylan (b. 1941) as an outtake from the recording session for his 1965 fifth studio album, Bringin’ It All Back Home. Originally recorded under the working title of “Alcatraz to the 5th Power,” Dylan rejected it from the album’s final song list, giving “Farewell, Angelina” to musician, singer, and performer Joan Baez (b. 1941), who was also Dylan’s partner at the time. Throughout his career, Dylan has never performed “Farewell, Angelina” in public, and in interviews, he has often demurred from offering a concrete explanation. In October of 1965, Baez recorded “Farewell, Angelina” for the release of her sixth studio album, and the song’s title eventually became the record’s title. Baez’s album “Farewell, Angelina,” which also included three other Dylan songs, signaled a shift from her prior focus on American folk songs and ballads to a more “contemporary” sound with the inclusion of bass and electric guitar.
“Farewell, Angelina” peaked at # 10 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, and Baez became associated with the song, even more so than Dylan. In the ensuing decades, “Farewell, Angelina” has been famously interpreted by a variety of artists, including Judy Collins, John Mellencamp, the Grateful Dead, and Jeff Buckley.
Folk singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan during the Civil Rights March on August 28th, 1963 in Washington, D.C.Album cover for Joan Baez’s Farewell, Angelina (1965)
In Dylan’s “Farewell, Angelina,” its melody was potentially inspired by several sources, including “Farewell to Tarwathie,” a mid-nineteenth-century Scottish ballad by George Scroggie, which in turn inspired the “Wagoner’s Lad,” an American folk song that Baez performed on her second studio album. American cowboy songs from the Lomax Collection, such as “I Ride An Old Paint,” “The Railroad Corral,” and “Rye Whiskey,” may also have played a role in shaping the strophic contour and melodic material of “Farewell, Angelina.” Dylan’s poetry details the mindset of a protagonist’s “everyday love… set against the backdrop of a derailing, unhinged world.” [1] Throughout the six verses of “Farewell, Angelina,” each with nine lines, the protagonist warns Angelina that they must part from one another. With ominous descriptions of the sky’s transformation from on fire, to trembling, to folding, to changing color, to being embarrassed, and then finally, to erupting, a foreboding sense of an imminent apocalyptic event provides the song’s cohesive narrative arc.
“Farewell, Angelina” performed by Joan Baez ℗ 1990 Vanguard Records, a Welk Music Group Company
Les Surprises et l’Océan (1927) by René Magritte
Beyond the protagonist’s unsettling farewell to Angelina, Michael Gray in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia observes that the remaining imagery in “Farewell, Angelina” is surreal, juxtaposing unrelated images and events to evoke feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty in the listener. Without explanation, a table stands empty by the edge of the sea. A host of card-like characters, jacks, queens, the deuce, and the ace, “forsake the courtyard,” but for what reason is unclear.
Menacing “cross-eyed pirates” shoot tin cans with a sawed-off shotgun as their neighbors gleefully applaud. On nearby rooftops, unique figures materialize; King Kong tangos with “little elves.” The final stanza of “Farewell, Angelina” climaxes with a terrifying hellscape from which the protagonist must flee. Dylan writes,
The machine guns are roaring The puppets heave rocks The fiends nail time bombs To the hands of the clocks Call me any name you like I will never deny it Farewell, Angelina The sky is erupting I must go where it’s quiet
It is impossible, however, not to observe the political and cultural critique of the violence, inequality, and corruption within 1965 American society inherent in Dylan’s text. In the year Dylan composed “Farewell, Angelina,” the United States was confronting the effects of the draft, the Vietnam War, as well as the increasing momentum of the civil rights movement. As President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed his vision of America as the “Great Society,” Malcolm X was assassinated in Manhattan. In Selma, Alabama, hundreds of peaceful civil rights protestors, demanding equal voting and Constitutional rights for Black Americans, were brutally beaten by state troopers on Bloody Sunday. Draft cards were burned publicly at anti-war rallies, while the US government increased troop numbers in Vietnam to 125,000, as draft numbers doubled.
As civil and voting rights protests spread across the nation, white supremacist and state-sanctioned violence against civil rights activists escalated. Again, it is difficult not to imagine that the puppets, fiends, pirates, cheering neighbors, and the makeup man who “shut[s] the eyes of the dead not to embarrass anyone” in Dylan’s poetry embody these pro-war, white supremacist factions within American society, who were committed to upholding their twisted vision of the “status quo” at all costs.
Protesters march against the Vietnam War at the U.S. Capitol on November 15th, 1969 Photo: Associated PressJohn Lewis (later U.S. Congressman) is beaten by a state trooper in Selma, Alabama, on March 7th, 1965 Photo: Associated Press
In 2019, composer Melissa Dunphy arranged Farewell, Angelina for solo voice and viola, commissioned by soprano Elise Brancheau for a concert benefiting coLAB Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Brancheau describes her impetus for the commission as follows,
The words, while strange and surreal, seemed to perfectly depict the sense of unrest and violence that fills our world today. The intimacy of the repeated ‘farewells’ to a loved one while the world literally falls apart feels especially poignant; the almost absurd contrast between lines like ‘I’ll see you in awhile’ and ‘the sky is falling’ reminds me of the feeling of wanting to draw inward and deny the frightening things happening around us while also being unable to ignore them. I began imagining what the music would sound like if it reflected the sense of chaos and destruction of Dylan’s poetry, and commissioned Melissa Dunphy to compose such an arrangement for voice and viola.
Like Brancheau, I was drawn to Dunphy’s arrangement of Farewell, Angelina for both musical and textual reasons. Musically, Dunphy’s setting for voice and viola created a taut dialogue, in which the voice engaged with repetitive text and a strophic melody. In turn, the viola imbued each stanza with its own distinct musical motif, as the repetition of the melody and text coasted above the evolving viola line. Textually, I agreed with Brancheau that Farewell, Angelina “perfectly depict[ed] the sense of unrest and violence that fills our world today.”
I could not help but relate Dylan’s poetry to 2020, the year of the pandemic. It was a year of helplessly watching the number of COVID-19 fatalities in the United States rise to over 565,000 of a global death toll of 2.9 million human beings, the fear and trauma sustained by health care and front-line workers, the loss of jobs, opportunity, and stability for so many, and the powerlessness of having an administration that not only had no plan to save our lives, but filled the airwaves with lies and took no responsibility for their ineptitude, bigotry, and the cruelty of their actions. It was the year of witnessing the brutal killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, which culminated in a summer of powerful civil rights protests. It was the year of the presidential election as proponents of active voter suppression, conspiracy theorists, peddlers of misinformation, as well as foreign entities joined forces to undermine our democracy. I find that the hellscape of Dylan’s imagination in “Farewell, Angelina,” although composed over 55 years ago, does not feel so completely surreal considering the past year’s events.
In the week after Thanksgiving, our original plan was to film Dunphy’s Farewell, Angelina on the National Mall amongst the monuments. By connecting this musical work to the Mall’s highly charged historical and political landscape, we wished to be, at least obliquely, in conversation with the cultural critique embedded in Dylan’s poem. We also, though, desired to connect Farewell, Angelina to our experiences creating art and confronting our roles as artists during the pandemic. We wanted this short film to explore our protagonist’s compulsion to create something from their lived experiences during these uncertain times.
For our concept, Flavia, the violist, busks to earn extra money from the scant tourists that still manage to visit the National Mall. As she and I pass through the monuments, we each have a different aim: she, to find her busking spot, and me, to simply take a walk on a sunny day. In doing so, we share the same path, our lives intertwining without our knowledge. I linger, listening to her music-making, and that, in and of itself, bonds us for a moment. As the Capstone plans solidified, however, we encountered COVID-19-related obstacles, and the shoot was cancelled two weeks prior. Still committed to our original concept, we rescheduled the film shoot in Washington DC for the week of January 11th.
Still of violist Flavia Pajaro Van-de Stadt from Farewell, Angelina Photo: Elizabeth Van Os
Five days prior, on January 6th, 2021, the insurrection at the Capitol occurred. I watched, only a few miles away, as the violence unfolded on television. I felt a mixture of utter sadness and numbness. With little time to reflect on the insanity of our national situation, I turned to the film shoot, scheduled for five days later. Over the next week, National Guard troops amassed in the city by the tens of thousands to ensure a safe and peaceful inauguration of President Joseph Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
I remember feeling ridiculous: were we really going to push ahead with our creative plans a week after an attempted coup against our government, not to mention the pandemic raging throughout the country? Were we intrepid, or terribly out of touch? I suppose, a combination of both. I am not yet quite sure how to define what we were in that moment, but regardless, we chose to set off for the Mall on January 13th. For safety concerns, however, we did not venture past the Washington Monument. Flavia and I traced a particular path: beginning at the Lincoln Memorial, walking along the Reflecting Pool, past the World War II Memorial, and finishing at the Washington Monument.
Six days later, on January 19th, President-elect Biden would stand on the path we had tread. In front of the Lincoln Memorial, he would mark the first instance of televised national mourning for the loss of 400,000 Americans to COVID-19. Along the Reflecting Pool, lanterns were lit against the backdrop of night falling, representing the lives of those who had died. Vice President-elect Harris, who days later would become the first woman and person of color to hold her national office, spoke, “For many months, we have grieved by ourselves. Tonight, we grieve and begin healing together.” [3]
President-elect Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff during a COVID-19 memorial at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (2021) Photo: Associated Press
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Farewell, Angelina by Melissa Dunphy from I take the long way there
Suffragist Series highlights the fascinating suffrage activists that I researched as dramaturg for A Women’s Suffrage Splendiferous Extravaganza! (AWSSE!), a new vaudeville-inspired revue about the history of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. It has been an eye-opening experience to confront how little I knew about the history of the women’s suffrage movement, and I look forward to sharing more about the lives and contributions of these remarkable activists. For more information about AWSSE! and to follow its newest developments, check out my projects.
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)
Mary Church Terrell was an eminent Black writer, educator, and civil rights activist, who co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and was an original signatory of the charter to establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Born in Memphis to an affluent family, her parents, who were both formerly enslaved, were successful entrepreneurs. Her mother, Louisa Ayres Church, owned a hair salon, and Terrell’s father, Robert Reed Church, was the first African American millionaire in the South. Terrell’s parents stressed the importance of education, and Terrell attended Oberlin Academy and Oberlin College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Languages, as well as a Master’s degree. Upon graduation, Terrell taught at Wilberforce College in Ohio, and in 1887, she moved to Washington DC to teach at the M Street Colored High School (which later became Dunbar High School).
Mary Church Terrell, ca. 1880-1900 Photo: Library of Congress
In 1892, Terrell grieved the loss of a close friend from Memphis, Thomas Moss, who was violently lynched by a white mob over the success of his business. Between 1877 and 1950, Moss was one of approximately 4,000 victims of lynching in the southern United States. [1] This tragedy spurred Terrell’s activism: she collaborated with her friend and famed journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) to organize national anti-lynching campaigns, as well as lobbied President Benjamin Harrison with civil rights activist and author Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) to condemn lynching.
NAACP Silent Protest Parade, Fifth Avenue in New York City (1917) Photo: Underwood and Underwood; Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Ida B. Wells, ca. 1893-1894 Photo: Ida B. Wells Papers; University of Chicago Library
In 1896, Terrell co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), serving as its first president. The NACW adopted her motto, “Lifting As We Climb,” which exemplified Terrell’s philosophy of community uplift to improve the daily lives of Black Americans and combat the virulent racial discrimination that they faced through education, activism, and employment opportunities.
“Lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long … Seeking no favors because of our color nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice and ask for an equal chance.”
Mary Church Terrell, “What Role Is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race?” (1902)
Banner with motto of Oklahoma Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
Photo: National Association of Colored Women (1896)
Mary Church Terrell (fourth from left) with activists picketing outside Murphy’s five-and-dime for refusing to serve African Americans (early 1950’s) Photo: Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University ArchivesPortrait of Mary Church Terrell by Betsy Graves Reyneau (1888-1964); U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
In service of education for all African Americans, Terrell served on the Washington Board of Education from 1895 to 1901 and from 1906 to 1911. She was also a passionate advocate for women’s suffrage. Undeterred by the racism that coursed through the women’s suffrage movement, Terrell advocated for the voting rights of Black women, stating that suffrage was not only an essential tool for self-enfranchisement, but would also uplift all African Americans. At the biennial meetings of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), Terrell spoke in 1898 and 1900, stressing that Black women were forced to confront the double barriers of racial and gender discrimination. Terrell’s intersectional outlook deeply informed her activism as a suffragist; she picketed Woodrow Wilson’s White House with members of the National Woman’s Party and spoke at the International Council of Women in Germany in 1904, presenting her speech in German.
Terrell became a sought-after speaker and writer in the United States and abroad, and in 1940, she published her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World, which described the successes, challenges, and discrimination she faced throughout her career as a Black woman activist and educator. After World War II, Terrell’s fight for social justice continued, and she worked to end legal segregation in Washington DC. While DC had passed anti-discrimination laws in the 1870’s, twenty years later, these laws had been eroded. African Americans were banned and excluded from public places, such as restaurants. In 1950, Terrell and her activist colleagues entered segregated Thompson Restaurant, asking to be served. The group was refused, and they sued. Terrell continued to target segregationist polices through boycotts, picketing, and sit-ins. In 1953, segregated eating places were declared unconstitutional in Washington DC, and in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
That same year, at the age of ninety-one, Terrell died in Highland Beach, Maryland. In the face of violence, ignorance, and prejudice, Mary Church Terrell tirelessly devoted her life to the advance of equal rights for Black Americans through supporting anti-lynching legislation and women’s suffrage, dismantling segregation laws, and advocating for equal access to education and economic opportunities for all.
Clara Schumann (1857) Photo: Franz Hanfstaengl (1804–1877)
Clara Schumann, a German Romantic-era pianist, composer, and piano pedagogue, was a celebrated virtuoso. From the age of eleven, she managed a 61-year concert career, touring throughout Europe. Her success as a concert artist secured essential income for her eight children and husband, the renowned composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856). She began composing as a child, and her compositions later included solo piano pieces, chamber music, choral works, and Lieder.
At the age of thirteen, Clara began to compose one of her most famous works, Piano Concerto in A minor, which she later premiered in Leipzig with composer Felix Mendelssohn as conductor. Due to her touring schedule, the management of her large household, and her own personal hesitancy towards composition, Clara’s output was often sporadic.
In her diaries, Clara expressed intense self-doubt about her compositional abilities, internalizing nineteenth-century socio-cultural prejudices against women as composers. She wrote in 1839, “I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not wish to compose – there never was one able to do it. Am I intended to be the one? It would be arrogant to believe that.” [1] After Robert’s death in 1856, Clara composed only two other pieces and turned her energy to performing, teaching, and caring for her children.
Throughout their marriage, Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling von Robert und Clara Schumann constitutes the only explicit compositional collaboration between the Schumanns. The collection includes nine songs by Robert and three by Clara, listed under the joint opus numbers op. 37/12. Throughout a protracted legal battle with Clara’s father, Friederich Wieck, over her hand in marriage and control of Clara’s finances, Robert continually expressed his desire to compose with his fiancée.
In 1839, he wrote to her that “we shall publish a good deal under both our names; posterity shall regard us as one heart and one soul and not find out what is yours and what is mine.”[2] In 1841, at the publication of the first edition of Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling, Robert purposefully instructed the songs to be published without identifying which “belonged” to each composer, further cementing his desire that the Schumanns were united in all things, including their aesthetic sensibilities. In fact, without prior knowledge, it was nearly impossible for nineteenth-century critics, performers, and audiences to discern who had specifically composed what, since Robert and Clara’s harmonic and motivic choices within Zwölf Gedichte complemented each other seamlessly.
Clara and Robert Schumann (c. 1850) Photo: Corbis, via Getty Images
Friederich Rückert; 19th Century Carte de visite after a drawing by B. Semptner
For poetic texts, Robert chose selections from Liebesfrühling, a collection of four hundred poems written by Friederich Rückert (1788-1866) during the courtship of his wife. Not only was Rückert one of Robert’s favorite poets, but the poetry itself was an apt choice for the newly married couple. In Liebesfrühling, Rückert crafted his poetry from two distinct perspectives: the voice of the poet (a male protagonist) and the voice of his Geliebte, or beloved (a female protagonist). After excerpting a set of Rückert poems for the joint project, Robert asked Clara to set five of the texts.
In January of 1841, Robert had composed nine Rückert songs in a flurry of compositional activity. By May of that year, Clara still struggled to compose her selections, writing in their shared diary, “With composition nothing at all is happening — sometimes I’d like to knock myself on my dumb head!” [3] However, weeks later, Clara finished four of her Rückert settings: “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” “Er ist gekommen,” “Liebst du um Schönheit,” and “Die gute Nacht.” She gifted the song set to Robert as a birthday gift, who then ordered the songs for publication, ultimately removing Clara’s “Die gute Nacht” from the collection. After offering their shared endeavor to the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, Robert presented Clara with the newly published volumes, divided into two sets of six songs, each concluding with a duet, as her surprise birthday gift.
While Robert and Clara may have originally intended Zwölf Gedichte aus F. Rückerts Liebesfrühling von Robert und Clara Schumann to function as a musical dialogue between two performers, embodying a couple as they explore the many facets of their romantic bond through song, the collection is rarely performed as such. Instead, songs are often excerpted by composer with Clara’s set of three songs performed separately, an interpretive decision that we also followed in I take the long way there.
In examining Clara Schumann’s Op. 12, the collection consists of three songs: “Er ist gekommen,” “Liebst du um Schönheit,” and “Warum willst du and’re fragen.” “Er ist gekommen” compares the arrival of the beloved to a stormy deluge, which furiously sweeps into the protagonist’s life, leaving them to wonder, “How could I foresee that his path would merge with mine?” As the storm calms and spring returns, the beloved sets off on their path once more. The protagonist, however, does not fear their absence because “he remains mine on any path.” In “Liebst du um Schönheit,” the protagonist pleads with their beloved to love truly and freely, rejecting the false values of beauty, youth, and wealth. In the final song of Op. 12, “Warum willst du and’re fragen,” the protagonist questions why their beloved believes the “fancies” of strangers over the truth and constancy genuinely expressed through their eyes. The protagonist has a simple request: “Whatever my lips say, see my eyes – I love you!”
Image: Elizabeth Van Os
In collaboration with NYC-based The Pleiades Project, I take the long way there reconceptualizes the three Lieder of Clara Schumann’s Op. 12 in German Romantics: Clara, which also represents the first film project I have ever co-created. While these songs may have marked the beginning of Clara and Robert’s union, our protagonist navigates Op. 12 as she copes with the end of an important relationship.
In coming to terms with the conclusion of this chapter in her life, our protagonist’s imagination travels to vibrant fantasy worlds. She engages with a series of invented historical personas, combining her contemporary self with illusory traces of past women’s lives. In becoming the heroine of her own story, our protagonist achieves a sense of closure, reapproaching her present circumstances with curiosity and a cautious hope for future possibilities.
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Notes
Nancy Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 216.
Rufus Hallmark, “The Rückert Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann,” 19th-Century Music 14, no. 1 (Summer, 1990): 4, https://www.jstor.org/stable/746673.
Reflections on Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 (1846)
Fanny Mendelssohn’s Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 was programmed on The little ghost for The Cantanti Project’s Project 4. For more information about this program, check out my projects.
Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847)
In February of 1847, Fanny Mendelssohn wrote in her diary,
I cannot deny that the joy in publishing my music has elevated my positive mood . . . it is truly stimulating to experience this type of success first at an age by which it has usually ended for women, if indeed they ever experience it. [1]
Fanny’s allusion to “this type of success” centered on the long-awaited publication of her compositions under her own name, a project which she had undertaken for the first time in her life in 1846.
At the age of forty-one, the publication of Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 and Vier Lieder for piano, Op. 2 marked her public arrival as a recognized composer. Before 1846, the only musical works of Fanny’s that had been made public were several Lieder, published under her brother’s name in his own collections of songs.
Portrait of Fanny Hensel (1842) by Mortiz Daniel Oppenheim (1800-1882); The Jewish Museum, New York
She was far from a stranger, however, to the field of musical composition, an expertise that she had passionately honed since the age of thirteen. Born into an eminent German family, Fanny received a robust education, both musical and academic, alongside her brother, who would later become the famed composer and conductor Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). From an early age, Fanny was acknowledged to be a virtuoso pianist and talented composer. However, her father, Abraham Ernst Mendelssohn Bartholdy, deemed it inappropriate and “unfeminine” for Fanny to pursue a professional career in music.
In 1821, her marriage to court painter Wilhelm Hensel solidified Fanny’s primary occupation as a homemaker, wife, and mother. Despite these familial and societal expectations, she maintained a profound connection to music throughout her life, albeit in the private sphere. Fanny composed more than 450 works, advised Felix on his compositions, and hosted Sonntagsmusiken, or musical salons, on Sundays in her Berlin home. Fanny’s music often premiered at these events, which were frequented by the European cultural and musical elite of the day.
Fanny Mendelssohn, sketched in 1829 by her husband Wilhelm Hensel (1794-1861)
With Fanny at the Mendelssohn Haus, Leipzig (2019) Photo: Caroline Miller
“…and where is Fanny?” from the Fanny Mendelssohn Exhibit at Mendelssohn Haus, Leipzig Photo: Caroline Miller
Fanny cherished an intimate, life-long friendship with Felix, who privately relied upon his sister’s opinions to develop his own compositions, while he maintained stubborn reservations about her entering the public sphere as a composer. Fanny often questioned her own abilities, internalizing the prejudices that were used to demean and diminish her ambition. In writing to a friend about her piece Faust in 1843, she wrote,
Please excuse and censure all the amateurish female snags within; a dilettante is a dreadful creature, a female author even more so, but when the two are joined into one person, of course the most dreadful being of all results. At least so far I have abstained from the printer’s ink; if someone suffers, it is my friends, and why is one in this world if not to be suffered by one’s friends? [2]
To experience Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 in this context, one sees that its publication was truly a personal triumph for Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, who did not “abstain from the printer’s ink” as she had been advised to do all her life. Although she passed away suddenly from a stroke in 1847 after having published her work for only a year prior, she remains an influential and prolific artist of her era, overcoming the pain of self-doubt and the debilitating consequences of nineteenth-century gender stereotypes.
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Morgenständchen, from Sechs Lieder, Op. 1 Joseph Yungen, piano
Morgenständchen
In den Wipfeln frische Lüfte,
Fern melod’scher Quellen Fall
Durch die Einsamkeit der Klüfte,
Waldeslaut und Vogelschall.
Scheuer Träume Speilgenossen
Steigen all beim Morgenschein,
Auf des Weinlaubs schwanken Sprossen
Dir zum Fenster aus und ein.
Und wir nah’n noch halb in Träumen
Und wir tun in Klängen kund
Was da draußen in den Bäumen
Singt der weite Frühlingsgrund.
Regt der Tag erst laug die Schwingen
Sind wir Alle wieder weit
Aber tief im Herzen klingen
Lange nach noch Lust und Leid.
Text by Josef Karl Benedikt von Eichendorff (1788-1857)
Morning Serenade
Fresh breezes in the treetops
A distant, melodious spring’s descent
Through the solitude of the ravine
Forest sounds and birdcalls.
Timid dream’s playmates
All rise with the morning light,
From the grapevine’s swaying buds
In and out, to you at your window.
And we draw near, still half dreaming
And we make known in sound
That which outside in the trees
The wide spring valley sings.
Once the day loudly moves its wings
We are again far removed
But deep in our hearts resound
Pleasure and pain long afterwards.
Translation by Bard Suverkrop; additions by Noelle McMurtry
Notes
Larry R. Todd, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 334.
Although various versions of the myth of Semele exist, they follow a similar narrative trajectory: Semele was a Theban princess. One day, she encountered the god Jupiter, who instantly fell in love with her. Since Semele is characterized as the object of Jupiter’s desire, her initial feelings are rarely elucidated. When Jupiter’s wife, Juno, learned of their relationship, she schemed to punish Semele. Juno disguised herself as Semele’s nurse, Beroë. Believing her nurse to be a friend and confidant, Semele confessed that Jupiter, the ruler of the Olympian gods, was her lover. Beroë questioned Jupiter’s honesty – was he truly immortal and so powerful? With these seeds of doubt planted in Semele’s mind, she asked Jupiter for a favor. Swearing on the River Styx, he promised to grant any request that Semele asked of him. Semele demanded that Jupiter reveal himself in his immortal glory to prove that he was truly a god. Jupiter pleaded with her to take back her request, but Semele insisted. Bound to his oath, Jupiter revealed himself as immense clouds, thunder, and lightning. Semele, a mortal, could not endure the heat’s intensity, and she was tragically immolated by Jupiter’s bolts.
Although the anonymous author of the libretto set by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) ends Semele’s tale here, her mythological narrative continues. At the exact moment of Semele’s lethal request, she is also pregnant. As flames engulf her, Jupiter saves their unborn child, “sewing” the fetus into his thigh. After Semele’s death and descent into the underworld, the baby is born, and he becomes Dionysus, the god of wine, theater, and fertility. Later, Dionysus rescues his mother from Hades, and Semele becomes immortal as Thyone, the goddess who resides over Dionysus’ court on Mount Olympus.
The anonymous librettist of de La Guerre’s Semelé, however, freezes Semele’s “portrait” at the precise moment of her death, followed by an air, or aria, with a pointed moralistic tone. The librettist writes, “When Love enchains us…let us not mix with his fire/ The desire of vainglory… It is in a tender bond/ That one finds the greatest happiness;/ Glamour, supreme grandeur/ Should count for nothing.” [1] Despite her manipulation by Juno and the inexplicable fact that Jupiter, the greatest god in all the universe, cannot transcend an oath of his own making, we are led to believe that Semele is at fault for her own demise. Semelé’s narrator claims that her mortal vanity, evident in her desire to prove that she was loved by an all-powerful god, is truly her undoing. If Semele had been privately satisfied with the love of Jupiter and unquestioning in her faithfulness, she may have survived.
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729)
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre by François de Troy (1645–1730), late 17th/early 18th Century Engraving by Juan Dolivar of the 1685 production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Roland, tragédie en musique at Versailles National Art Library, Paris
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the tendency to conclude with a “moral” lesson was common in French cantatas. Airs often reflected upon past events or shed light on the specific emotion of a character within the drama. Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre published Semelé, dedicated to the Elector of Bavaria, in 1715, as part of her collection of secular cantatas. Semelé is an extension of the seventeenth-century Italian “‘cantata,’” meaning “‘sung,’” a genre that designated a piece of music written for voice(s) and accompanying instruments (basse continue). By de La Guerre’s time, cantatas were often comprised of several movements, alternating between recitative passages and arias, marked by tempo and key changes. Cantatas were performed at Versailles and other royal residences, as well as in salon concerts at the homes of French nobles. De La Guerre navigated the complex power dynamic between nobility and the artist class throughout her lifetime. Educated in Louis XIV’s court as a child, de La Guerre learned to sing, compose, and play the organ and harpsichord.
At 15 years old, she was placed in the retinue of Madame de Montespan, a patron of the arts and mistress of the king, who socialized with leading intellectual and cultural figures of the day, such as Racine and Quinault. [2] In 1684, de La Guerre left the service of the court due to her marriage to organist Marin de La Guerre. She continued to compose, perform, and publish as a freelance musician, seeking financial support through noble patronage.
Throughout her career, de La Guerre published under her own name in a variety of genres, including sacred vocal music, instrumental works, ballet, and opera, or tragédie en musique. She is credited with composing the first opera written by a woman in France, Céphale et Procris. [3]
Portraits of Semele
I have chosen three images to depict Semele, creating a portrait-timeline that culminates in this tragic and deeply unjust moment in her story. The first is the work of Jan-Erasmus Quellinus (1634-1715), a Flemish painter from a family of famous artists, who specialized in history and portrait painting. Jupiter, Semele, und Juno depicts Jupiter’s pursuit of Semele, as Juno peers from the clouds above. Cupids, nestled in the left-hand corner of the work, point to the couple, as if to reveal their relationship. Jupiter’s body language is ominous and overpowering, while Semele appears to run from him. Our second image was painted by Pietro della Vecchia (1603-1678), a Venetian painter, who painted in a variety of genres, such as altar pieces and portraits. Jupiter and Semele depicts the violent instant when Jupiter reveals to Semele the extent of his immortal powers. Semele’s face is frozen in fear and pain while Jupiter’s lightning bolts rise above her. The image is disturbing, especially due to Jupiter’s imposing form, which aggressively looms over Semele’s reclined body.
Our last image is Semele by John Duncan (1866-1945), a Scottish painter and illustrator, best known as a proponent of the Celtic Revival in Scottish art. It depicts the titular figure in death, consumed by flames. It is important to note, however, that in this portrait, Semele is finally depicted as an individual. In my research, I often found it common to find images of Semele in relation to Jupiter: in a state of sexual rapture beside him, being pursued by him, or being killed by him. Rarely did I find Semele depicted as a person, an individual, alone. Duncan’s image is powerful in that Semele does not appear to be in pain, but rather illuminated. The flames do not harm her body but seem to expand her presence. Although Duncan’s portrait still represents her demise, I find Semele’s stare unsettling, as if to assert: I will not be consumed.
Watch
Semelé by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre Paula Maust, harpsichord Christian Paquette, Baroque flute Theodore Welke, theorbo
i. Simphonie ii. Recitatif – Jupiter avoit fait un indiscret serment iii. Air – Ne peut-on vivre en tes liens iv. Prélude Bruit v. Recitatif – Mais, quel bruit étonnant se répand vi. Simphonie vii. Air – Quel triomphe, quelle victoire viii. Bruit ix. Recitatif – Ah ! quel embrasement tout à coup m’épouvante x. Dernier Air – Lorsque l’Amour nous enchaisne
Notes
Mary Cyr, “Introduction.” In The Collected Works – Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre. New York: Broude Trust, 2005, 13-15.
Rebecca Cypess, Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 2019. Accessed on November 24, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elisabeth-Claude-Jacquet-de-la-Guerre.
Cyr, “Texts and Translations.” In The Collected Works – Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, 39.
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre’sSemeléwas performed as part of Portraits: The Self Illuminated. For more information about the program, check out my projects.
