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Appendix A: English translations of 17th-century Lament texts
I am certainly not the first to write compositions with heavy influence from the Lament. Even in their own time, pieces like “Lamento d’Arianna” were adapted and re-set by other composers, including Severo Bonini (1582-1663) and Francesco Antonio Costa (1580-1626). Monteverdi himself produced two other adaptations of his famous Lament: the first, a five-part madrigal; the second, a sacred contrafactum entitled the “Pianto della Madonna” which depicts the lamentations of the Virgin Mary upon the death of Jesus. The legacy and reimagining of these historic Laments continues to this day; Annie Lennox’s rendition of “When I am laid in earth” (“Dido’s Lament”) was re-recorded in 2020 with London City Voices.1 Lennox chose to use this Lament to talk about the current climate crisis, and her music video begins the following statement: “When it comes to climate catastrophe, we are on the edge of abyss […] I see Dido’s Lament as a lament for our dying planet.”2 Other present-day composers have also used the Lament as inspiration for their own compositions – I chose not to explore these works beyond noting their existence until after the completion of my own Laments to avoid any possible influence they might have in my own academic and creative process.
While the act of lamentation may not be undertaken in Western society with the same formalities of the 17th century, grief is still an innate part of the human experience, as demonstrated by the vast range of poetic subjects that came my way in the open call for Lament texts. Remarkably, most of the modern Laments still utilized subject matter that was out of the speaker’s control, as was seen in the historic Laments. Unlike the majority of the historic Laments, none of my Laments for a Modern World have a lament-triggering event specifically fueled by a romantic attachment.
These final Laments for a Modern World are not written following all the conventions of 17th-century Laments, but rather utilize some of the specific techniques that illicit pathetic responses. My influence tended towards specific rhetorical techniques and organizational structures, particularly the use of word painting and non-verbalized melodic gestures that could be easily recognized.
Each of the four pieces carries an ambiguous voice that is not specified as any one gender. The voices and instruments for the premiere recordings were cast to offer different colours and styles to demonstrate the potential versatility of these compositions. Even in cases where the poetry was written from a specific person’s experience, the musical composition is designed so that it can be performed by any persons who feel a connection to this story. The Laments are not set in any one particular key so as to make them accessible to any voice type, not just those that were cast for the recordings. Thus, these Laments for a Modern World will be able to offer an endless number of perspectives on how we express grief.
8.1 Laments for a Modern World, No. 1: “Carry Me”
The incredible vulnerability of Anna Eastland’s words is what led me to select “You Carry Me” (shortened to “Carry Me”) as the first Lament in this project. The message of the text is vaguely reminiscent of Molière’s “À M. La Mothe le Vayer sur la mort de son fils”: an invitation for those who have experienced the heartbreak of losing a child to grieve their profound loss.
In the artists statement sent with her submission, Eastland wrote:
“You Carry Me” was written in the shower, or rather it was sob-sung there six days after I lost my baby daughter Josephine in labour. It was the first thing I typed up and shared on my blog. It’s brevity and simplicity are expressive of the limited space in which a mother has to grieve when caring for other children. This poem is both an expression of faith, and [of] giving myself permission to grieve deeply, while still believing in providence and the ultimate goodness of life. It is an intermingling of love and sorrow, and a childlike cry for help to carry such a weight...a mourning mother’s need for tenderness and care as she tries to keep on living with a broken heart. As miscarriage and stillbirth can be such secret and hidden losses, and therefore harder to heal from, due to lack of community support, I feel it’s important to acknowledge and share this intense experience. It is sadly far more common than we would hope in our modern society […] Every child deserves to be celebrated, and every grief to be mourned.3
The bassline of the composition is taken from the lowest voice of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s motet “Sicut cervus”—a piece that Eastland said often played in her mind in the days after Josephine’s death. The vocal line, set in the recitar cantando style, features numerous repetitions of ‘carry me’, first set in a manner that reflects the inability to speak coherently following a trauma, and later as a plea to be given a way to continue on in life. Fermatas delineate different affectual segments that are further coloured by means of word-painting, dissonance, and chromaticism. Unlike the historic Laments, “Carry Me” ends with a note of hope: that one day we will be able to carry on and live above our grief.
The premiere recording of the piece features Swiss harpist Anna Gander and myself as the vocalist. The draft score originally given to Gander was left bare, with only the bassline and a basic chord structure to indicate the harmony. After a working session together, I set emotional intentions for each line of the accompaniment and suggested places where the voicing could be thicker and where the harp could add some improvisation to mimic the traditions of basso continuo accompaniment. The resultant interpretation includes moments of disbelief that quickly dissolves into grief, sweet remembrances of the child that never was, a period of numbness, and a gathering of faith to try to overcome the overwhelming grief.
“Carry Me” is dedicated to Josephine.
8.2 Laments for a Modern World, No. 2: “Sharks”
The poem submitted by Tim Tim Cheng was originally titled “Ghosts”, but at some point during the compositional process, I made the unconscious switch to “Sharks” and started referring to it as such in our correspondences. When Tim Tim pointed out my mistake, she thought that the change in title was serendipitous, and the new title was permanently adopted. In her artists statement, Cheng wrote: “I hope to deal with the psychological and physical struggles women experience as a potential child-bearer in the face of police brutality. Images in my poem come from a mix of protest news, Cantonese idioms, Warsan Shire’s poem ‘Home’, and conversations I have had with my friends, who have children or have had miscarriages over the last few years of news overload. Many of my friends are brave life-givers and enablers who know that taking good care of a child is a radical act. I believe that laments are a great space for processing intergenerational traumas and guilt women often carry. The melancholic insistence in laments also runs in my own body of work.”4
Although Cheng’s poem was originally written with ties to the struggles of women, I chose to re-imagine her words as a duet in which two different perspectives could be applied, regardless of the gender. My intention in doing so was not to diminish the strength of these women, but rather to acknowledge the emotional hardships of those who are not necessarily potential child bearers. The final composition included the use of integrated ritornellos inspired by Cavalli’s “Uscitemi dal cor lagrime amare” in the Venetian style, offering interludes for emotional processing between the vocal passages. The interweaving of the violins in these ritornellos symbolize the ever-present dangers that surround us in society, and are built out of sequential dissonances and sighing gestures. While the bassline does not precisely follow the tendencies of 17th-century continuo, the notated open fifths at the ends of cadences are a nod to the practices of Purcellian basso continuo.
The premiere recording features five live-recorded musicians and an electronically rendered and superimposed electric bass. As rehearsal with the vocalists did not take place until the day of recording, soprano Shanice Skinner and tenor Edmond Chu’s inflections and characterizations of the Lament were unhampered by myself. A brief rehearsal with violinists Elana Cooper and Hanna Crudele was organized to allow them to experiment with ornamentation as a duo, and a short working session in which I sang the vocal lines for harpsichordist Pablo Devigo-Vázquez took place a few days before recording so that he could develop ideas as to how to affectively realize the continuo.
8.3 Laments for a Modern World, No. 3: “Autumn Oud”
“Autumn Oud” was the piece I found most difficult to compose. As librettist Tom Clark began his sabbatical soon after our initial meeting, our contact was limited and subsequently he was less involved in compositional decisions. I wished to include Clark’s idea for a melody in the final piece but found it challenging to pin down a tonal center from the single recording I had of him singing. In the end, the melody of “Autumn Oud” contains fragments of Clark’s melody threaded together with lines that attempt to surge upward but are forced to descend back down as soon as they peak. The chord structure pulls away from 17th-century conventions in order to include these fragments, although fermatas and periods of rest are still used to indicate breaks between sections. An overall atmosphere of unrest is achieved by setting the text in a manner that sits between recitar cantando and longer melodic phrases, with some sentences carrying through as a unit and others broken apart to reflect a sudden change of thought.
I was not completely sure about the outcome of the piece until we entered the recording studio to put it together for the first time. The recording features Turkish singer Kaan Yazıcı, accompanied by Jeremy Bass, who plays a lute in place of an oud. To demonstrate the flexibility of these compositions, Yazıcı was asked to add his own traditional folk inflections to the melody, and Bass to improvise his accompaniment in a pseudo-continuo style. In the hands of Bass and the voice of Yazıcı, Clarks words of sorrow and dreams left behind were brought into heartrending relief. Simple improvisations on the lute invited Yazıcı’s husky voice to come forth with an openness that invites listeners to share in this story of loss.
Where the other librettists went into detail regarding the nature of their submissions, Clark included only a single sentence as his artists statement: “‘Autumn Oud’ […] is a lament for the traumas and travails of migration”; the relevance of these words become ever more poignant as the months progress. Since the selection of “Autumn Oud” for the project, Russia has launched a military invasion of Ukraine (February 24, 2022), and news headlines are still flooded with stories of people being displaced from their homes. The world watched as millions of refugees fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries, and it is still uncertain as to when they might return to their homeland.
8.4 Laments for a Modern World, No. 4: “something pulls me up”
Tanisha Nuttall’s poem “something pulls me up” is a representation of struggles with mental health. Of the four Laments in this collection, this was the only one to be musically co-composed. In the summer of 2022, I met up with vocalist Olivia Jackson for a working session, armed with Nuttall’s poetry and the simple four-note chaconne bass that I wished to use. Over the course of an afternoon, Jackson and I tested out different melodies and vocalizations over the ground bass, which I recorded and used to create a basic composition that included the bassline, chord structure, and a simple melody. This draft was sent back to Jackson and her duo partner, Brendan Wong, who met up with Nuttall to layer on their own instrumentation and musical style. Once their adaptation of the draft was complete, a fully-mixed recording was sent back to me and I re-notated the basic score to better reflect the changes they made. While this score does reflect the final collaborative composition, it does not include all the elements that exist on the final recording in order to preserve the relative adaptability of the compositions in this project.
Jackson likened her rendition of the melody and the added vocalizations to siren song, which correlated well with images of water that Nuttall and I had tossed around during a brainstorming session. The auditory word painting was added to by Wong in the form of electronically generated ocean waves that bookend the recording of the Lament. Within the notated score, word painting is the primary rhetorical figure used, and elongated syllables are set in a manner that is reminiscent of moaning. Periods of intentional rest are included to separate affectual segments.
The resultant composition is emblematic of the constant hold of depression and anxiety, with the idea of a siren calling us out further into the unknown darkness. As with Eastland’s “Carry Me”, “something pulls me up” ends with a note of hope – in this case, with a loved one pulling you back onto shore.
“something pulls me up”
CREDITS: Written by Ai Horton (co-composer), Olivia Jackson (co-composer), Brendan Wong (co-composer), and Tanisha Nuttall (librettist); performed by Olivia Jackson (voice), Brendan Wong (instrumentals), and Tanisha Nuttall (voice, hand drum, and additional audio); recorded and edited by Brendan Wong.
1. Rosie Pentreath, “Annie Lennox sings deeply moving ‘Dido’s Lament’ with massed online choir,” Classic. FM, January 6, 2021, accessed January 7, 2023, https://www.classicfm.com/composers/purcell/annie-lennox-didos-lament-with-london-city-voices/.
2. Annie Lennox, “Annie Lennox – Dido’s Lament – London City Voices,” YouTube video, 4:52, December 16, 2020, accessed January 7, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3DFaIovZxc.
3. Anna Eastland, artist statement submitted to author, March 7, 2022.
4. Tim Tim Cheng, email message to author, June 26, 2022.