Sunday Classics preview: "Tot ist Tove" -- Schoenberg's "Song of the Wood Dove"

Mezzo-soprano Ann Murray sings 10 minutes' worth (alas, not the whole thing; the clip even lops off the beginning, starting instead with the chilling words "Tot ist Tove" -- "Dead is Tove") of the "Song of the Wood Dove" from Arnold Schoenberg's stupendous dramatic cantata Gurre-Lieder. It's from a 1994 London Proms performance, of which we're going to hear more tomorrow, with Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

by Ken

We have lots of unfinished business to deal with, and some we're going to and some we aren't. This is not a good weekend for me for thinking, so my efforts to explain what I already tried to explain in last week's post, both about the exhaustion of our musical language and about the weird wonders of Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony, are going to have to be put on hold. And while I thought we might get deeper into Schoenberg's massive and glorious dramatic cantata (for want of a better description) Gurre-Lieder (Songs of Gurre), I think we'll just pick up with what I planned to say and play last week.

Last week we were headed for the end of Part I, following the exchange of increasingly passionate utterances between King Waldemar and Tove, which come to a thudding, terrifyingly abrupt end when a Wood Dove announces to its fellow doves of Gurre the unimaginably horrible news: "Tot ist Tove -- "Dead is Tove," allowing for the German-allowable word order. (Later the Wood Dove does sing the more normal "Tove ist tot.")

One of the most astonishing performances I've ever heard was the complete Gurre-Lieder that Seiji Ozawa conducted at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1974 (the Schoenberg centenary year), at the end of his first season as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Eventually (in 1979, to be exact), Seiji and the BSO did the piece again, performances that Philips had the great good sense to record -- the result is still by a wide margin the best recording of the piece we've had, including the only really satisfactory Waldemar, James McCracken (who had been in the 1974 cast too).

In some respects, though, the 1974 performance remained unmatched. One of those respects was the stupendous Wood Dove of the outstanding American contralto Lili Chookasian. As it happens, Chookasian had recorded the "Song of the Wood Dove," also with the BSO, in 1964, under then-music director Erich Leinsdorf. This performance isn't as hair-raising as the 1974 one, but it will give you an idea of the basic suitability of the voice for this unique music.

SCHOENBERG: Gurre-Lieder: conclusion of Part I,
Orchestral Interlude and "Song of the Wood Dove"

Original German text by Robert Franz Arnold, translated from the Danish of Jens Peter Jacobsen; English translation by Linda Godry, from The Lied and Art Songs Text Page

Doves of Gurre! Full of sorrow I am,
while on my way across the island!
Come! Listen!
Dead is Tove! Night in her eyes,
Which were the kings daylight!
Silent is her heart,
but the King's heart is wildly beating,
Dead and wild as yet!
Oddly like a boat
on heaving waves,
if the one, to whose welcome
the planks have bent
in tribute,
the ship's helmsman is dead,
entangled in the weeds of the deep.
Nobody brings them news,
impassable the path.
Like two streams
have been their thoughts,
flowing side by side.
Where do Tove's thoughts flow now?
The King's are oddly winding,
searching
for those of Tove,
and can't find them.
Far did I fly, laments to search,
and found aplenty!
The coffin I saw
on the King's shoulders,
Henning supported him;
dark was the night,
a single torch burned
beside the path;
the Queen held it,
high on the donjon,
full of vengeful musings.
Tears
she denied herself,
but glistened in her eye.
Far I flew, laments to search,
and found aplenty!
The King I saw,
with the coffin he drove,
in a peasant's dress.
His charger,
that often had carried him to victory,
was pulling the coffin.
Wild was the King's eye,
searching for that gaze,
irritated listened the King's heart,
for that word.
Henning talks to the King,
but still he is searching
word and gaze.
The King opens Tove's coffin,
Stares and listens
with quivering lips,
Tove is silent!
Far I flew, laments to search,
and found aplenty!
A monk went to pull the bell rope
for the evening's blessings [prayers];
but then he saw the coachman
and heard the bad news:
The sun sank, while the bell
rang out the death knell.
Far I flew, laments to search
and death!
Helwig's falcon it was, who
cruelly tore apart Gurre's dove.

Lili Chookasian (c), Voice of the Wood Dove; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Oct. 19, 1964

I shouldn't inflict this on you, but here is a quite poor transfer and MP3 rendering (I did it myself!) of the London Sinfonietta's recording of Schoenberg's 1923 chamber-ensemble arrangement of the "Song of the Wood Dove" (from Decca's Schoenberg Complete Works for Chamber Ensemble set, from which last week we heard The Iron Brigade):


Anna Reynolds (ms), Voice of the Wood Dove; London Sinfonietta, David Atherton, cond. Decca, recorded Oct. 1973-May 1974


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST --

More Gurre-Lieder. Not as much as we should have, but still, a lot more Gurre-Lieder!


SUNDAY CLASSICS POSTS

The current list is here.

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