Photo: Christian Steiner

  __________________________

 Thea Musgrave
  composer
  __________________________

 

On the Underground, Set No. 3
(1995) — A Medieval Summer
Duration: 10'
for unaccompanied SATB choir
Text: Chaucer and Anon 13th - 16th centuries
Commissioned by the Ionian Singers with Funds from the Holst Foundation

World Premiere:  19 November 1995. St John's, Smith Square
Ionian Singers
Timothy Salter, conductor

Publisher:  Novello & Co Ltd

Composer's Note:

There is one unexpected pleasure taking the London Underground (and, more recently, also the New York City Subway): one's eye may alight on a poem placed amongst the pervasive and numbing advertisements, and, for a moment, the imagination takes wing.

The poems chosen for this work are all to be found in Poems on the Underground.

In A Medieval Summer poems and music are interwoven to form a kind of tapestry which is intended as a memory of medieval times. Chaucer's Roundel (from The Parliament of Fowls) provides the framework into which other poems are inserted. First, the anonymous 14th century fragment "Ich am of Irlonde" sung by a solo soprano, then the anonymous 15th century poem "I have a gentil cock". An offtsage tenor, who has up to now only been heard very distantly with echoes of "Sing cuckoo", appears and leads off. Some of the musical material appears in its original form: for instance the famous 13th century round "Sumer is icumen in, loude sing cuckoo". Here, the intruding cuckoo, which has been heralded by an offstage solo tenor, is shown as the betrayer of true love, and effects an abrupt change of mood. The joyful welcoming of summer becomes an angry lament. Other voices respond to this implied betrayal of true love by the cuckoo, and gradually overwhelm the round with an angry lament "I shall say what inordinate love is" (anon. 15th century). Here a solo contralto is accompanied by an invented canto fermo sung in the Latin text of the same poem. In "Western wind when wilt thou blow" which follows the original 16th century canto fermo is used. At the end, the final lines of the Chaucer Roundel, now softly accompany a solo soprano as she exits singing the lines of the cuckoo in a sad echo. It is as if the "Irish girl" is the one who has been betrayed.

Texts:

Now Welcome Summer....
  		 

(Tenor solo, offstage)
 

Cuckoo, cuckoo, sing cuckoo.
Now welcome Summer with thy sunne soft.
 		  

(Soprano solo)

 I am of Ireland.
And of the holy land
Of Ireland.
Welcome, now welcome summer...
Good sir, pray I thee,
For of saint charity,
Come and dance with me
In Ireland.
          ANON. (14th century)
 

Welcome summer with thy sunne soft.

(Tenor solo)



Sing cuckoo, sing!
Sumer is icumen in.
That hast this winter's weathers overshake.
And driven away the longe nightes black.

Saint Valentine, that art full high aloft.
Thus singen smalle fowles for thy sake:



Sing cuckoo, sing.
Sumer is icumen in
Loude sing cuckoo.

I have a gentil cock, croweth me day
he doth me risen early, my matins for to say

I have a gentil cock, comen he is of great
his comb is of red coral, his tail is of jet

Now welcome Summer, welcome.

I have a gentil cock, comen he is of kind
his comb is of red sorrel, his tail is of inde

his legs be of azure, so gentil and so small
his spurs are of silver white, into the wortewale

his eyes are of crystal, locked all in amber
and every night he percheth him in my lady's chamber
                                                       ANON (early 15th century)
 

Now welcome Summer with thy sunne soft.
That hast this winter's weather overshake.

Well have they cause for to gladden oft.
Since each of them recovered hath his make.
Full blissful may they singe when they wake:

  

(Enter tenor)
(TENOR with 3 solo SOPRANOS)

Sumer is icumen in.
Loude sing cuckoo!
Groweth seed and bloweth mead
And springeth the woode now,
Sing cuckoo!

                          Amor...

Ewe bleateth after lamb.
Cow loweth after calf,
Bullock sterteth, buck ferteth,
Merry sing cuckoo!

                          Amor...

Cuckoo, cuckoo!
Well singest thou cuckoo,
Nor cease thou never now!

                          Dicam quid sit amor.

Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo!
Sing cuckoo, sing cuckoo now!

ANON. (13th century)
 

(Contralto solo)

I shall say what inordinate love is:
The furiosity and wodness of mind, (wodness: frenzy)
An instinguible burning, faulting bliss,
A great hunger, insatiate to find,
A dulcet ill, an evil sweetness blind,
A right wonderful sugared sweet error,
Without labour rest, contrary to kind,
Or without quiet, to have huge labour.



Dicam quid sit Amor;
Amor est insania mentis
Ardor inextinctus,
insaciata fames
Dulce malum, mala dulcedo,
dulcissimus error
Absque labore quies,
absque quiete labor.
 

ANON. (15th century)
The Latin source of the English poem.

I shall say what inordinate love is.

Now welcome Summer with thy sunne soft.
That hast this winter's weathers overshake.
And driven away the longe nightes black.

  
(Soprano offstage) Sing cuckoo, sing
Sumer is icumen i
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Ah, love!

Welcome! Welcome!

  
from The Parliament of Fowls. Geoffrey Chaucer. (1340?-1400)

Recording:

On the Underground. Set #3: A Medieval Summer
New York Virtuoso Singers, Harold Rosenbaum, conductor
BRIDGE RECORDS: Bridge 9161 - See CD Review

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