Weinzweig: Essays on His Life and Music

8. Works with Texts

173 Chapter 8 Works with Texts john beckwith John Weinzweig’s works for chorus and for voice(s) with or without piano and/or other instruments may be summarized as follows: three works with non-English texts; two works with English texts translated from other languages; and twenty works with texts compiled—or, in most cases, written—by the composer. He produced a few vocal works in the 1940s and early 1950s, and one large work for solo voice and orchestra in 1957, but it was not until more than a decade later that he again addressed the voice: the 1960s constituted for him a mid-career phase of concentration on instrumental media.The works for solo voice(s) of the period 1970 to the late 1990s relate closely to the “theatrical” preoccupations initiated with the percussion solo Around the Stage in Twenty-Five Minutes (1970). Like their instrumental counterparts, many of these scores, though conceived for concert performance , include instructions for stage movement. The gap between the first choral pieces (1945, 1951–2) and the series of short works for chorus of 1980–85 is even wider. His main reason for having resisted the choral medium, was, he said, his dissatisfaction regarding articulation and audibility on the singers’ part and comprehension on that of the audience. (A telling injunction from a late vocal score reads: “clear phonetic enunciation has precedence over tone quality.”)1 Asked in 1968 why his repertoire to that date showed few vocal works, Weinzweig said: “My interest in the voice was a late development. Then the search for suitable words became frustrating. Finally I made up my own text, a practice that I have recommended to my composition students.”2 The LAC Weinzweig Fonds contains evidence of his “search”: two folders of poems by 174 the composer various authors, in handwritten or typed copies, which Weinzweig regarded as possible texts for vocal compositions.3 One of the folders bears the label “Thematics—text material.”Writing for voice evidently attracted him, but the choice of text entailed long consideration. Poems by Eric Aldwinkle,Archibald McLeish, Stevie Smith, D.S. Catton, Pablo Neruda, and Miriam Waddington appear in the collection, sometimes with dates (“London 1944,”“1950,” etc.). The list includes published poets as well as personal acquaintances for whom poetry was an avocation.A poem entitled“Decision by Kilroy,”dated 1959, by Richard E. DuWors, a sociologist at the University of Saskatchewan, is accompanied by an exchange of letters with the writer.4 Its three-character conversation may have been considered as a potential opera scene. Surprisingly,Weinzweig never set a text by his wife Helen, a well-respected author of two novels and a short-story collection. In an interview he observed that their work had “many elements in common.” She had, he said, a strong feeling for literature and“developed an ear for music: she would hear me compose at the piano and got to know when the work was moving along and when it was stuck.”5 The extent of her influence on his original texts is difficult to document. There is evidence that he was in search of a suitable operatic text. In one of the LAC folders is an undated eight-page “Sketch for a Libretto for a Stylized Opera,” by Miriam Waddington.6 The title is Bonsche Schweig in Montreal . There are seven characters, and indications that a chorus would be called for. The central figure is “a schlemazel” who works as a lettuce trimmer in a supermarket.The libretto is a series of song lyrics rather than a continuous dramatic outline with dialogue and plot.“Other Projected Songs”are mentioned by titles and a few lines only, suggesting that the project was under discussion . But it never materialized. The late vocal works incorporating“theatrical” elements—for example, Journey Out of Night (1994), subtitled “a monodrama ”—are as close to opera as Weinzweig ever came. First Vocal Works To the Lands Over Yonder, Weinzweig’s first choral composition (1945), is based on a Copper Inuit dance-song and a translation of its text, from the collection of Helen Roberts and Diamond Jenness—the same publication which had served him in some of his CBC radio-drama scores of the early 1940s.7 Given this source, it has a musical affinity with his Edge of the World (Radio Music No. 2, 1946), and it anticipates the choral writing in his score [18.222.22.244] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 18:35...