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Edgard Varèse Offrandes
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Edgard Varèse (1883 - 1965) - Offrandes (1921) • I. Chanson de là-haut [0:00] • II. La croix du sud [3:11] • Sarah Leonard, soprano • ASKO Ensemble, Riccardo Chailly (1996) • Edgard Varèse's Offrandes, or Offerings, is a setting of two poems by Vincente Huidobro and José Juan Tablada. The work is scored for soprano and chamber orchestra, and typically lasts around 7 minutes. • The mesmerizing two-part Offrandes is possibly the most direct statement of his tormented inner world Edgard Varèse ever made. It's that tremor of personal pain pulsating through all the vividly colored din that Stravinsky was reacting to when he said that the first harp attack in part two nearly gives him a heart attack. He called it 'the most extraordinary noise in all of Varèse.' Offrandes is for soprano and a representative chamber orchestra, with harp and eight percussion instruments. These are used in ever-changing combinations (emphasizing percussion, winds, and brass) and with a constantly varied dynamic. Except for the vocal part, there's no melody as such. The accompaniment is all built on flinty little rhythmic gestures that sometimes mutate into a fragment of a tune. The stormy instrumental parts could almost make up a Varèse piece by themselves. They often go into a howl or die down to nervous mutterings of percussion -- ominous rattles of snare drum, woodblocks, castanets -- under the heavily chromatic vocal line. In part one, 'Chanson de là-haut' (The Song From Above), it seems as if he is suppressing a wish that the voice was a more flexible instrument, reaching so high he strains her range. In part two, 'La croix du sud' (The Southern Cross), however, on a dreamlike, apocalyptic poem by José Tablada, he's in complete control and makes the precariousness of her top notes into a potent source of dramatic tension. The point, as in all of Varèse's mature music, is color, intensity, and instrumental attack, which here evoke a vivid, haunted internal world. As Tablada says in his Apocalyptic text: '...the murdered women are awakening.' Although listeners always feel that Varèse's music is poetically composed from his subjective center, his instrumental aesthetic is more mechanical (or machine-like) than organic. The lyricism that the soprano brings to Offrandes illuminates the organic/mechanic dialectic of struggle that powers Varèse's music: the diminishing scale of the human individual in relation to humanity's rigid bureaucracies and its machines. Varèse certainly looked forward to the future, especially the musical freedoms it would bring, but the tragic sense of humanity in retreat before the brutal steamroller of conformity was a source of great spiritual suffering to him, which he movingly expressed in Offrandes. • Full text of the poems, in French and English: • Chanson de là-haut • La Seine dort sous l'ombre de ses ponts. • Je vois tourner la terre • Et je sonne mon clairon • Vers toutes les mers. • Sur le chemin de ton parfum • Toutes les abeilles et les paroles s'en vnt. • Reine de l'Aube des Pôles, • Rose des Vents que fane l'Automne! • Dans ma tête un oiseau chante toute l'année. • Vincent Huidobro • Song from Above • The Seine is asleep in the shadow of its bridges. • I watch Earth spinning, • And I sound my trumpet • Toward all the seas. • On the pathway of her perfume • All the bees and all the words depart, • Queen of the Polar Dawns, • Rose of the Winds that Autumn withers! • In my head a bird sings all year long. • Vincent Huidobro • La croix du sud • Les femmes aux gestes de madrépore • Ont des poils et des lèvres rouges d'orchidée. • Les singes du Pôle sont albinos, • Ambre et neige et sautent • Vêtus d'aurore boréale. • Dans le ciel il y a une affiche • D'Oléo margarine. • Voici l'arbre de la quinine • Et la Vierge des douleurs. • Le Zodiaque tourne dans la nuit de fièvre jaune. • La pluie enferme tout le Tropique dans une cage de cristal. • C'est l'heure d'enjamber le crépuscule • Comme un zèbre vers l'Île de jadis • Où se réveillent les femmes assassinées. • José Juan Tablada • The Southern Cross • Women with gestures of madrepores • Have lips and hair as red as orchids. • The monkeys at the pole are albinos, • Amber and snow, and frisk • Dressed in the aurora borealis. • In the sky there is a sign, • Oleomargarine. • Here is the quinine tree • And the Virgin of the Sorrows. • The Zodiac revolves in the night of yellow fever. • The rain olds the tropics in a crystal cage. • It is the hour to stride over the dusk • Like a Zebra toward the Island of Yesterday • Where the murdered women wake. • José Juan Tablada • (sources: AllMusic, lieder.net) • Original audio: • Edgard Varèse - Offrandes
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