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[00:00] The Newberry Concert presents Revolution, May 7th to 10th in Chicago, Evanston and Milwaukee. Hear early American music from the 18th to 19th centuries from a wide variety of cultures, including Moravian sacred music, Cotillion music, spirituals and more, performed on early American instruments. The concert will also include an original composition for historic instruments and voices by bass baritone Jonathan Woody. See it live or watch the streaming version from June 1st to the 22nd online. Tickets available at newberryconsort.org. Hello, and welcome to Sticky Notes, The Classical Music Podcast. My name is Joshua Weilerstein, I'm a conductor, and this podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank all of my new Patreon sponsors, Rita, Percy, Eric, Mateo, Karen, Ben, Mark, Anastasia, Janice, and Peter, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for making season 11 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com/stickynotespodcast. If you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It is greatly appreciated. I am working with the BBC Philharmonic this week on two different programs, really exciting stuff, but I actually wanted to use this introductory time to ask for a favor. I have received three or four emails, some Facebook messages and things like that about the level of the sound on the podcast, that either my voice is too loud or too soft, or the music is too loud or too soft. Unfortunately, the comments are quite varying depending on where they're coming from. So I wanted to solicit some feedback from everybody. If you do have a problem with the volume either of my voice or of the music in relation to each other, can you please email me at stickynotespodcast.gmail.com. And the most important thing is can you please specify the device that you're using to listen to the podcast because I think that might be the source of the problem. Or if you are an expert on GarageBand, please let me know. The context for this is that this is really a one man show. I sit in my office and record and of course write the episodes, record them, edit them and then put them out basically all by myself. I have a wonderful person who runs my Patreon page. But in terms of the content of the podcast, it's all me and so I unfortunately don't have a huge, huge breadth of knowledge on podcast producing and things like that. So that's the context in which I'm asking for this feedback. People who are experts in GarageBand, people who know a lot about how different devices process podcasts, I'm happy to make any changes that are necessary. But I did want to add that context to this little introduction. Thanks so much and thank you for the feedback and the help. For today's episode, I am really happy to share with you a real exploration of a piece of Lili Boulanger. I've done an episode on Lili Boulanger before, but it was more of a general overview of her music, and it's really nice to dive into one of her large scale pieces in a lot of detail. So I really hope you enjoy this episode on this really terrific piece, Boulanger's Psalm 130. Hope you enjoy it. The story of Lili Boulanger's life is one of the most fascinating and tragic in all of musical history. A remarkably precocious talent, Boulanger learned to read sheet music before the alphabet, played the violin, piano, cello and harp, and composed regularly from a young age. Despite her talent and commitment, Boulanger suffered from chronic illness her entire life, which severely dampened her budding career and prevented her from reaching her potential. She died at the age of just 24, likely from Crohn's disease, and left behind several spectacular pieces that, unfortunately, were soon relatively forgotten. Boulanger's sister, Nadia, became one of the preeminent composition teachers of the 20th century, working with luminaries such as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Philip Glass, Astor Piazzolla, and many, many more. But throughout the 20th century, there was very little interest in Lili Boulanger's musical output. That has changed somewhat with a renewed focus on bringing the works of female composers to the stage, and this has led to an explosion of performances of a few works, specifically Boulanger's brilliant short orchestral pieces, D'un Matin de Printemps and D'un Soir Triste. But there is still a dearth of performances of some of Boulanger's great choral pieces, and in particular of Psalm 130, a piece I find to be absolutely stunning but which is almost never performed. The piece written in memory of Lili and Nadia's father Ernest is Lament, a piece that shows off the potential of the 22-year-old composer, writing a piece far, far beyond her years in its emotional maturity and technical ability. In many ways, Lili Boulanger should be thought of in the pantheon of the great musical prodigies in Western classical music. Unfortunately, she is also in the pantheon of the great composers who died tragically young. Today on the show, we're going to do a brief overview of Lili Boulanger's life to orient you with her style, and then we'll go through this gorgeous piece, talking about Boulanger's influences and her creative use of those influences, and discussing whether this piece might have had an autobiographical element or not. All this and much more is coming right up on Sticky Notes. As many of you know, I've already done a full-length overview of Boulanger's life and works, an episode I do recommend listening to before you listen to this one, as just like with all lesser-known composers, some of the details of their biographies give us a lot of insight into their music. In Lili Boulanger's case, and specifically for the purposes of this show about Psalm 130, her father Ernest was a hugely important figure in her life. Ernest Boulanger was a relatively successful 19th century composer and teacher, whose operas were regularly performed in France during his lifetime. He was a winner of the prestigious Composition Prize, the Prix de Rome, and was a respected figure in the French musical world. At the age of 62, he married his voice student, a Russian princess named Raisa Maciecki, who was 41 years younger than him. They had two children together, Nadia and Lili. Lili was born incredibly when Ernest was 77 years old. At the age of 2, Lili came down with pneumonia, the after effects of which she struggled with until the age of 16, and which arguably contributed to her early death. When Lili was 7, her father, who was 84 at the time, passed away, something that of course deeply affected her, as she was extremely attached to her father. Looking to follow in her father's and sister's footsteps, Lili entered the Prix de Rome in 1912 at the age of 18, but collapsed during a performance of her cantata due to illness. Undeterred, she entered again the following year, and became the first woman to ever win the Prix de Rome with her cantata Faust et Hélène, another piece that gets performed from time to time, but still quite rarely. Boulanger was never able to keep up with composing for very long, either due to illness or due to World War I. Nevertheless, she completed three large-scale orchestral choral pieces during the war, Psalm 24, Psalm 129, and A Buddhist's Prayer. As World War I came nearer to its end, Boulanger's health began to fail. Her final works, other than D'un Matin de Printemps, are unfailingly dark, with meditations on suffering and on death prominent in those works. This brings us to Psalm 130, which is known in the Latin liturgy as De Profundis, Out of the Depths. The piece was written in 1917, a year before Boulanger's death, and seems to be a way for Boulanger to have written a requiem without actually having written one. While it is dedicated to her father, many commentators have said that it could very well have been about her own suffering and the knowledge of her impending death, or a memorial as well to all those who had died during World War I. The piece is written for alto, tenor, chorus, and large orchestra, and is one of her longest pieces. I have to admit, it was very difficult to find good background information about this piece online due to the rarity of its performances. But I did come across a great dissertation by John Douglas Perkins, who provided lots of information for the upcoming analysis of this piece, and also about the background information of the work, so I want to give him a big thank you for that. Perkins divides the work into five sections, with the first being the orchestral introduction. Let's dive into the piece now, with its murky and brooding beginning. It doesn't take long to feel that there is something quite unusual going on here. Boulanger scores this opening for a cello solo and a tuba, a combination I don't think I've ever seen before. And also the organ, a prominent voice in this piece, is already present right from the start. This is certainly an almost literal representation of music coming out of the depths. We then hear one of the most important motives in the entire piece. It is an arpeggio played in another unusual orchestration by a solo bass and a contrabassoon, followed by soft sighs in the violins. One of the things that is always present in Boulanger's music is a sense of atmosphere. Her music was influenced heavily by both the impressionists, Debussy and Ravel, though there were others, and of course they hated that term, and also by the symbolist poets, like Verlin, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé, and the symbolist musicians like Skriabin and again Debussy. But this influence, while always present, doesn't tamp down the music's individuality. Just these first two orchestration choices alone are a bold choice that marks the piece as being in Boulanger's voice. We then hear those oscillating half notes again, slightly more present than before. This builds to an agonized first climax. You might imagine Boulanger would use the gigantic orchestra she has available to her, but instead she gives this moment just to the violins. I'm reminded of a kind of anti-Moller's Ninth Symphony here. In the last movement of Mahler 9, the violins play many lines that are like this, but in a profoundly peaceful way full of acceptance. Boulanger does the exact opposite. The line churns and struggles before landing on music of profound pain and suffering. Boulanger now starts to develop this music slightly, taking the initial oscillating idea, and again, thanks to John Douglas Perkins for pointing this out, and expanding it to turn it into something marked and dangerous rather than brooding. This idea first introduced by the trumpet will lead us to much faster and more agitated music, and the first hints at the large orchestra employed for the piece. This is building to the first true climax in the piece. With remarkable intensity for a 22-year-old composer, Boulanger takes her initial ideas and puts them together. The oscillating notes at the beginning, which have now been transformed into that slightly militaristic dotted rhythm, and the jagged arpeggios, which are no longer only expressive, but are now a bit desperate. We arrive with a cry of pain to the top of this hill. In just the first two and a half minutes or so of this 25-minute piece, Boulanger has taken us straight into her dark world. The harmonic language is unusual, the orchestration is unusual, and the emotional intensity of the piece is unusual for a French composer as well. This is Boulanger's work through and through. As this violent eruption winds down, the oscillating melody returns, and sets the stage for the entry of the chorus and the second section of the piece. Boulanger takes the text of Psalm 130 and translates it to French, but she leaves the Hebrew word for God, Adonai, in place, a very interesting choice that lends a different color to the smooth and rounded sound of the French. The tone, as you can imagine, remains dark and brooding, with the choir intoning these words. From the depths of the abyss I cry, Yahweh Adonai, hear my prayer. Boulanger takes from her grab bag of influences in this music, but as always, makes things her own. The next phrase where we would expect to hear more text, Boulanger has the choir express painful sighs while instructing them to keep their mouths closed, as if they are unable to speak openly. This is punctuated by a strong rhythmic motive in the low strings, and it's followed by a newly agitated tempo in the next line of the text, which is sung not like a prayer, but as more of a desperate cry. May your ears be attentive to the sounds of my prayer. This sighing motive has started to become prominent in the piece. It finishes this phrase as well, though this time Boulanger assigns it to the whole orchestra. A half-step sighing motive is a cliche in music for a reason, it works. And Boulanger makes it an essential part of the text's way of communicating, though by no means the only part. She also, as I said before, writes music that is beseeching and powerfully striving to be heard, only to fall back onto the size again. We now hear perhaps the motto of the whole piece, and the first true melodic line as well. To the text of the first two lines of the psalm, Boulanger writes a gently flowing and profoundly moving line led by the altos and basses, the two lines in choirs that usually have the least prominent melodic voice, as opposed to the sopranos and tenors. It's a beautiful choice that also emphasizes the subdued and plaintive nature of this music. The development of this theme, still on the same text as before, is more passionate, incorporating all parts of the choir as well as much of the orchestra, including an organ. The use of the organ, the text, and the dark nature of this piece has, as I said, led some commentators to describe this piece as more like a requiem. And that's not far from the truth, considering early drafts of this music included texts from the traditional requiem text like the Kyrie. In the end, we always return back to the oscillating theme, this time over haunting renditions of the word Adonai. This leads us to the coda of this second section. Boulanger returns to the opening lines of the psalm, from the depths of the abyss I cry. The orchestration thins out, and we meditate one more time on this moving and evocative text. But the harmonies are not like they were at the beginning of this section. Instead, they are far more modal, bringing a kind of archaic sound to this music. In lesser hands, this might sound incongruent, but Boulanger's integration of the text into the music makes it sound like the prayer that it is, just perhaps from another time. The section concludes with one more powerful call on the text, May Your Ears Be Attentive, and then a kind of listless adonai. The general feeling one gets from Boulanger's use of the text here is one of desperation and faint hope. It leads us to the third section, which starts off in a much more agitated manner than anything we've heard before, and yet it doesn't fully get moving yet. We've moved on now to the second part of the text, where Boulanger once again has the altos and bases lead the lines of, If you were to take our sins into account, who could withstand them, Yahweh? To this text, Boulanger writes this kind of waiting music, as if waiting for an answer in the same way the text does. The music keeps threatening to break out. It is extremely ominous, with allusions to those arpeggios from the opening introduction. It seems as if something dramatic is about to happen, but we have no idea where we are going to go next. Boulanger makes a powerful choice by splitting this section of the text in half. This allows her to take on the idea of our sins not being withstood, creating a powerful storm of emotion and intensity that threatens to overwhelm us. In an extraordinary moment, Boulanger puts the fear of God right into the music here, especially when she reverts back to the opening lines of the text. And this leads to a massive climax on the big tune from earlier on in the section, and Boulanger returns again and again to the opening lines of the text. As if the mentioning of our sins spawned this massive outpouring of emotion, Boulanger once again repeats her desperate cry to God. This is the most emotionally powerful moment of the piece so far, and it is in many ways the crisis moment of the piece. Motivically, the music is guided by that oscillating melody that has been a constant presence in. As this dies down, we return to the archaic modal music, which introduces section number four of the piece, the voice of the individual. We hear an alto solo, again, the rarer of the two female voices for this kind of music, as she takes on that second section of text from the psalm. Perhaps this time, we can make it to the second part of the text, but only through the voice of the individual. The orchestration here is gorgeous. The music is in a gently flowing three, with quietly oscillating harp syncopations, while the alto is accompanied by a solo cello. Once again, she finds a totally unique and individual color. But Boulanger cannot get to the next lines. We return again to our sins, as if ruminating on them. But Boulanger starts to slowly move the tempo forward, and the entire alto section of the choir now joins the soloist in a passionate cry of Yahweh Adonai. The orchestra now takes over and a powerful momentum builds. Perhaps the breakthrough is coming? For the moment, no. The tempo is marked as animated and very rhythmic, as the cellos now begin a violent and powerful rhythm that seems to be churning against waves of sound in the rest of the orchestra. The momentum is still growing and grows for nearly a minute of music, becoming ever more marked and agitated. And Boulanger denies the breakthrough we all thought was coming. The next lines, which I've been keeping from you are, forgiveness is in Yahweh, and so he is revered. But Boulanger continuously refuses to provide that solace. She is writing this amidst lifelong health problems, the death of her father and the death of Europe and the world that she knew in the immediate aftermath of World War I. It's no wonder that forgiveness from God was not strongly in her mind. And so the grand climax of this section is yet another repetition of If you were to take our sins into account, who could withstand them, Yahweh? The music resolves into a kind of stasis. The harps play an ostinato, while the opening arpeggios return in the solo cello. It's almost as if the music is waiting for those next lines, like it can barely believe that they haven't been able to embrace them. Boulanger has stayed on this text for well over half the piece now. But finally, we arrive there. With a magical transformation from uneasy and static music to a luminous though ambiguous beauty, the next lines are revealed to us by the alto. Forgiveness is in Yahweh and so he is revered. The mezzo-soprano, slash alto, then continues on with the next lines of the text. My soul places its hope in Yahweh. I hope I count on your word more than the night watchman long for the morning. Listen throughout this section to the strange, yet absolutely gorgeous harmonies. In my Patreon exclusive mini episode this week, I'll try to point out some of those to you using the piano because it's hard to describe them here. But they really don't sound like anything else. It's like a beautiful combination of Debussy, Berg and Wagner, all at once. It's also fascinating how Boulanger portrays these words of hope while enveloped in this fog of harmonic ambiguity. As the vocal line rises, Boulanger keeps adding more voices from the orchestra. But far from clearing up the harmonic ambiguity, it actually heightens it. The ostinato continues, and as we head towards the final lines of the psalm, uncertainty reigns. And now Boulanger brings in the choir, returning back to the My Soul Places Its Hope in Yahweh text. The choir takes over these mysterious rising lines from the orchestra and from the mezzo, creating a gentle cacophony of overlapping harmonies and colours. As this begins to reach another climax, Boulanger makes a fascinating textual choice. The mezzo calls out, though this is easily covered by the massive sound behind her, the next line of text. Israel places its hope in Yahweh. While the choir depart from the text of the psalm slightly, and say, I believe in you, I believe in Yahweh. This humanization and personalization of the text is not a small decision to make for someone who was as religious as Boulanger. It's not easy to catch, obviously even less so if you don't speak French, but I think it's a gorgeous and truly personal moment in the piece. But just as we approach what could be a breakthrough, we return to that invocation of God, that plea from the beginning of the peace. Always we return to the same relentless sense of pleading and helplessness. Though this time Boulanger takes it into another direction, as we find ourselves in the coda of the peace. The text continues, for In Yahweh is mercy, and the fullness of redemption. It is he who will deliver Israel from all her iniquities. In Yahweh is mercy, a Yahweh Adonai. Now the mezzo is joined by a solo tenor, and the music starts to acquire more tonal grounding, though it is still chock full of those 1910s tonal ambiguities that composers of that period were experimenting with, just before the Schoenbergian full breakdown of tonality. Boulanger now begins to move the tempo again as we hear those final lines I just read to you, along with a text from earlier on. Israel places its hope in Yahweh. Once again, she starts to bring all of her motives together, the oscillating idea, the arpeggio, the rising plaintive lines. But this time it seems, finally, as if we might be given the musical redemption promised by the text of the psalm. It all culminates in a stunning moment of the clearest F major. But in a shocking swerve, Boulanger disrupts this gorgeous breakthrough by abruptly returning back to the character, harmony, and ideas of the opening of the piece. Not only that, the text from the beginning returns as well. All of that effort was, at least for the moment, for nothing. The initial sentiment remains too strongly imprinted on us. Boulanger now uses the text of redemption and forgiveness, but over the harmonies of the opening, creating a stark juxtaposition of the forgiving text and the violence and darkness of the music. I didn't want to give that away to you, because I remember when I first heard this final climactic moment, chills ran down my spine. It's as if the first 24 minutes of the piece led to this moment, this cry of despair, helplessness, beseeching God for deliverance. And as this cry dies down, it also seems to have synthesized the ideas of despair and hope. And for the final moments of the piece, the opening of the text and the end of the text are juxtaposed. One low, one high. As this prayer ends in the ambiguity of the time, what would be next for Lili, for France, for the world? The final bars of the piece are in one of the darkest keys in music, B-flat minor. B-flat was an extremely important note and key for Boulanger. In John Douglas Perkins' dissertation about the piece, he cites a fascinating source, an article by Bonnie Jo Dopp entitled Numerology and Cryptography in the Music of Lili Boulanger, The Hidden Programme in Clarière dans le Ciel. Now, that's an article about another piece, but it reveals something about Boulanger that I think is very connected to this ending. Boulanger was apparently obsessed with the number 13, and the number 13 appeared many times in her life and in her music. But more importantly for our purposes here at the end of the piece, B-flat was also a note that meant a lot to Boulanger. As Perkins writes, Quote, Many of Boulanger's darkest or most sorrowful themes appear with B-flat pitches or in B-flat minor. Dopp states that B-flat may represent Lili, or more precisely, Boulanger. B-flat likely represents a diminished or doomed form of the pitch B. The fateful tone of Psalm 130 and Pour les Funerales d'un Soldat for the funeral of a soldier are both represented with the key signature of B-flat minor. The dedication of the piece at the top of the score is To the Memory of My Papa, but the tone of the piece, the beseeching way she uses the text, and the reliance on B-flat minor, especially at the end, give me the feeling that Boulanger was writing about much more than her deceased father. It's almost a piece that feels like it was written at the end of the world, in a state that is almost in a dream or a hallucination at times. I find this piece almost unbearably powerful, and it's one of my dreams to perform it on the same program as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Maybe one day. Thanks so much for listening to the show today. We'll have some more exciting stuff for you in a couple of weeks, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show gain more visibility. And please send any questions to stickynotespodcasts.gmail.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, just head over to patreon.com/stickynotespodcast. Thanks, and I'll talk to you again after a while.