Rising – Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Three Stages
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
III. Streets, Woods – Like as the Waves (from Three Stages)
Sunrise, Wednesday April 15
Like as the waves towards the pebbled shore,
so do our minutes hasten to their end
We return to nature.
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen was a master of structure, texture, and humor. All are present in this third movement of his Three Stages for twelve solo voices, one of the most entertaining, fun pieces we've ever sung; we love the amazing variety of "things we are called on to do" in this piece.
While today's Rising w/ focuses on the third and final movement, the extraordinary structure requires a bit of explanation. In the first movement, "The Street," contemporary cries of Copenhagen introduce the mundane and profane. The second, "The Woods," finds us mimicking birds - both literally (screeching!) and in song. In the third, "Street, Woods - Like as the Waves" the first two movements are miraculously overlaid to form a new whole - like the end result of a silk screen - while a simple melody is interwoven above, quietly proclaiming Shakespeare's musing on the inevitability of life and death.
The three movements reflect Søren Kierkegaard's three stages of life: aesthetic, ethical, and religious - the latter containing the first two, as does Pelle's, revealing the astonishing ability of this composer to imagine simultaneously both the foreground and background of music! Pelle writes:
There's something deeply moving, lying on your back on the ground, thinking about, 'Ashes to ashes; dust to dust.' It's nice to think one disappears or perhaps that one carries on - seeped into the earth, made use of in some manner - and that one has arisen from that same near-nothingness. There's something very encouraging about this. Thus, it's not so rarely that I think about this arriving and departing.
We love to sing this piece because it is joyous and it is virtuosic - a surprising romp that leads to a kind of departing; in the final bars, our voices finally all gather together into one very tall chord that dissipates into near-nothingness.
Grab your coffee. We're going for a walk in the woods!
Be well.
- The Whole Team @ The Crossing
Three Stages
III. Streets, Woods - Like as the Waves
music by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
words from William Shakespeare, Clement Janequin, Danish folksongs, and etc.
recorded live in concert at The Month of Moderns
June 21, 2015 at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
audio by Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services
video art by Beth Haidle
* * *
These are the cries, sounds and street
cries of Copenhagen.
Up the street. Down the street.
–paraphrase of Luciano Berio's Cries of London
Les Chant des Oiseaux / The Song of the Birds
sung in French
Awake, sleepy hearts,
The god of love calls you.
On this first day of May,
The birds will make you marvel.
To lift yourself from dismay,
Unclog your ears.
And fa la la la la
You will be moved to joy,
For the season is good.
You will hear, I advise you,
A sweet music
That the royal blackbird will sing
In a pure voice.
Ti, ti, pi-ti
To laugh and rejoice is my device,
Each with abandon.
Nightingale of the pretty woods,
Whose voice resounds,
So you don't become bored,
Your throat jabbers away:
Frian, frian
Flee, regrets, tears and worries,
–Clement Janequin
These fragments from familiar Danish songs are sung in Danish:
High on a branch a crow
Simsaladim bam basala dusala dim
High on a branch a crow sat
–trad. Danish, based on a German folksong
Now awake all God's little birds,
they leave the nest and sing.
–Bernhardt Severin Ingemann
Within the deep calm forest quiet,
where hosts of singers,
in an idyllic peaceful quiet...
in the forest solitude.
–trad. Danish, Langeland folksong
Like as the waves towards the pebbled shore,
so do our minutes hasten to their end;
each changing place with that which goes before,
in sequent toil all forwards do contend.
–William Shakespeare, from Sonnet 60