TWO AUDIO PIECES Dominick Argento won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975 for his song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. The work was dedicated to the British mezzo soprano Janet Baker. She gave the premiere, with pianist Martin Isepp, in Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis. The performance was broadcast and has been making the rounds. From the Diary of Virginia Woolf has always been a favorite of mine. I suspect it is underperformed today. It's not exactly a laugh fest. Argento takes eight entries of the diaries kept by Mrs. Woolf between 1918 to the final entry in March, 1941, a few weeks before her suicide. The texts are serious and introspective, snippy, wise, triumphant and sometimes despairing. This is like a late 20th century version of Schubert's Winterreise. The challenge to the artists is to provide the variety crucial in any work of art that is sometimes not immediately obvious in the texts or the music. You don't listen to this casually. But careful listening, with the attention due an important literary figure and a gifted composer, will be repaid. Here's a selection from the fourth song, Hardy's Funeral. (January, 1928) [audio:diary-1] This is from the final song in the cycle, the diary's Last Entry (March, 1941) [audio:diary-2] And below are the diary texts with the sung portions in bold face. IV. Hardy's Funeral (January, 1928) Yesterday we went to Hardy's funeral. What did I think of? Of Max Beerbohm's letter...or a lecture...about women's writing. At intervals some emotion broke in. But I doubt the capacity of the human animal for being dignified in ceremony. One catches a bishop's frown and twitch; sees his polished shiny nose; suspected the rapt, spectacled young priest, gazing at the cross he carries, of being a humbug...next here is the coffin, an overgrown one; like a stage coffin, covered with a white satin cloth; bearers elderly gentlemen rather red and stiff, holding to the corners; pigeons flying outside...procession to poet's corner; dramatic "In sure and certain hope of immortality" perhaps melodramatic...Over all this broods for me some uneasy sense of change and mortality and how partings are deaths' and then a sense of my own fame...and a sense of the futility of it all. VIII. Last Entry (March, 1941) No. I need no introspection. I mark Henry James' sentence: Observe perpetually. Observe the oncoming of age. Observe greed. Observe my own despondency. Or so I hope. I insist upon spending this time to best advantage. I will go down with my colours flying...Occupation is essential. And now I find with some pleasure that it's seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.
Christopher Purdy is Classical 101's early morning host, 7-10 a.m. weekdays. He is host and producer of Front Row Center – Classical 101’s weekly celebration of Opera and more – as well as Music in Mid-Ohio, Concerts at Ohio State, and the Columbus Symphony broadcast series. He is the regular pre-concert speaker for Columbus Symphony performances in the Ohio Theater.