Barbara Harbach – Music and the Spoken Word

I know about incandescence, I’ve been the victim of incantations (don’t ask), and have heard of contatas. Last Sunday, I heard Paul Muldoon’s Incantata, a long poem, read aloud by Eamonn Wall, and interpreted by St. Louis composer Barbara Harbach for nine instruments – violin, viola, cello, piano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and trumpet. This was quite an original performance combining spoken word and music, distinctive forms and sounds, side by side.

A nice thing about a city like St. Louis is that it is large enough to attract some of the world’s finest artists, especially in the classical music scene. But it is small enough that you can actually engage these folks and learn some things without being intermediated by the media. I had met Ms. Harbach at a literary function earlier this year and have struck up an email dialogue with her.

She was gracious enough to answer two questions I had about her premier work:

-Why this number of players? Answer…the poetic story is on a large scale and she needed a small chamber orchestra to match that scale (as opposed to, say, a quartet or a trio).

-Why a conductor? Answer…the piece has complex cross rhythms that needed a conductor to keep together. More than six players gets a bit tricky to keep it all together.

As briefly as possible, the story concerns an Irish artist, Mary Farl Powers, with whom Muldoon had a tumultuous romance with, who elects not to treat her cancer using modern treatment methods. The liner notes for the program note that the poem is both a lament and a dissent from the artist’s fatalistic world view.

Each of the five movements, or musical interludes (?), has an easily identified fragment, that builds effortlessly into the theme. Memorable moments in the music for me were the transition from happy and spritely to somber and cautious in the first movement (“Powers”); the beautiful piano solo in the second movement (“Nocturne”) and the few measures of a string trio; the way the third movement (“Composed of Odds and Ends”) changes from a Irish jig like dance to a march, from pastoral and rural to patriotic; and the low jazzy rumblings building into a slow long crescendo to end the fourth movement (“Bitter-Sweet”). The fourth movement also features a lovely piano entrance.

I wished the fifth movement (“Coda”) gave me more of an impression of an ending, a wrap up, a tying together of the loose ends, rather than an abrupt piece of punctuation. I wanted more, not less, is what I mean.

Harbach’s complex rhythms were nevertheless quite approachable and appealing. I mean, it wasn’t like it went from Rastafarian to boogie or anything. I hope a CD is forthcoming so I can spend more time focusing on both the reading and the music. Even for the writer that I am, I have a terrible time focusing when I listen to a reading. It is so much easier for my mind to accompany music than the spoken word. I can’t wait to try get both sides of my brain working on this one again, though!

About the group that commissioned this work – Poetry Scores (St. Louis) apparently is known for pushing boundaries, synthesizing forms, and multi-media. It was noted during the intro that the group recently staged a combination of poetry readings and burlesque dancing. Sorry I missed that!

For those unaware, Harbach is an organist, harpsichordist, and prolific composer and much of her music is available on CD. I’ve got several of them. She incorporates subtle American themes and sounds, and has been compared to Aaron Copeland, but after I listened a few times, I kept thinking about Dvorak and how his New World Symphony, to me anyway, whispers America although I doubt I could ever articulate why. It just does.

Harbach’s music is beginning to whisper to me as well. And, let’s not forget, she’s a woman. How many lady composers of “classical music” do you know? I know only one – the obscure Amy Beach from the early 1900s.  That alone makes Harbach’s music uniquely interpretated compared to all the male masters you know all too well.

Time’s a wastin’ for times to be changin’.  This lady should be heard whether you are around to see her or not.