Addison Singers: On Photography

Date:

March 26, 2022

Location:

7:30pm St Peter's Church, Southfield Road, London W4 1BB

Event Web Site:

https://www.addisonsingers.com/event/chamber-and-oratorio-choirs-spring-concert/

The Addison Singers Chamber and Oratorio Choirs Spring Concert includes On Photography, for choir, piano and harmonium, as well as Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, which uses the same instrumentation and which had inspired Gavin’s work. Gavin will be playing the harmonium in both works.

Programme:

Mascagni: Easter Hymn

Bryars: On Photography, for choir, piano and harmonium

Rossini: Petite Messe Solennelle, for soloists, choir, piano and harmonium

Directed by David Wordsworth

Piano; Matthew Hough

Harmonium: Gavin Bryars

Note on the piece

On Photography is the earliest work of mine for choir and was written in 1983 as part of the work I did with Robert Wilson on his large-scale operatic project The CIVIL WarS. Although the piece was rehearsed and prepared for recording by the choir of South German Radio, it was never performed due to the collapse of the overall project. Until 1994 the manuscript was lost – I eventually found it behind a filing cabinet as I was clearing my office having given up university teaching. The choice of text and subject matter was mine and is loosely connected to my love of the work of Jules Verne. I knew that Verne had met Pope Leo XIII in 1884 (a hundred years before our work was due to reach fruition) and that Leo XIII had written a poem Ars Photographica in praise of photography (a modern subject using an archaic language, Latin) when he was still Cardinal Pecci in Perugia in 1867. As it happened, the writer Susan Sontag was considering joining the project and we spoke together several times. I knew, of course, that one of her first major books was on photography, and this led me to set Leo’s text almost as a way of welcoming her on to the team. The final section consists of a brief Latin epitaph. The instrumental accompaniment of the longer central section  (piano and harmonium) reflected the fact that I had then recently played the harmonium part in Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.

I love the harmonium – as a solo instrument in the works of Siegfried Karg-Elert, and as a subtle ensemble instrument in the music of Percy Grainger – and I have used it in other works, such as my arrangements of the music of Tom Waits Mercy and Grand

On Photography: text 
I

Expressa solis spiculo
Nitens imago, quam bene
Frontis decus, vim luminum
Refers, et oris gratiam.

O mira virtus ingeni
Novumque monstrum! Imaginem
Naturae Apelles aemulus
Non pulchriorem pingeret.

Sun-wrought with magic of the skies
The image fair before me lies:
Deep-vaulted brain and sparkling eyes
And lip’s fine chiselling.

O miracle of human thought,
O art with newest marvels fraught –
Apelles, Nature’s rival, wrought
No fairer imaging!
(trans. H.T. Henry, 1902)

II (Latin text as in I, then in Italian translation)
Tersa, perfetta imagine,
Di sol da un raggio uscita,
Oh come ben sai rendere
Movenze, aspetto e vita

Oh nuovo e gran miraculo
Dell’Arte! Opre più belle
Ha mai dipinto l’emulo
Della Natura Apelle?

(trans. Cesario Testa)

III
Resonare fibris, labii reatum, mira ut queant laxis mira gestorum Sancte Joannes;
Famuli tuorum solve polluti reatum, ut queant laxis Sancte Joannes.
(a re-ordering of “Ut queant laxis..” the Hymn of St John)

Gavin Bryars