Camille Claudel: Into The Fire.

CAMILLE CLAUDEL: INTO THE FIRE (Gene Scheer) for Mezzo soprano and (Piano) String Quartet. Bent Pen Music, Inc., 2011. Tonal with shifting harmonies and keys; [B.sub.3]-[B[flat].sub.5]; Tess: M, mH, CR; regular meters with some changes; varied tempos; V/M-D, P/M-mD; 66 pages. Mezzo soprano.

"Prelude: Awakening." Instrumental; leads directly into "Rodin."

1. "Rodin." Tonal, shifting; [D.sub.4]-[G.sub.5]; Tess: M; 9/8, 6/8, Moderately ([crotchet]. = ca. 60); V/mD, P/M; 8 pages.

2. "La Valse." Tonal on G, shifting; [C#.sub.4]-[B[flat].sub.5]; Tess: CR; 3/4, 2/4, 6/4, Fast and agitated--in one ([micron]. = ca. 76); V/M-mD, P/mD; 14 pages.

3. "Shakuntala." E minor; [B.sub.3]-[A.sub.5]; Tess: CR; 4/4, 2/4, With energy ([crotchet] = ca. 112); V/mD-D, P/mD; 10 pages.

4. "La petite chatelaine." E[flat] minor; [C.sub.4]-[G[flat].sub.5]; Tess: M; 3/4, Gently, like a fragile minuet ([crotchet] =ca. 104); V/MmD, P/M; 7 pages.

5. "The Gossips." F-C minor; [C.sub.4]-[A.sub.5]; Tess: M-mH; 2/2, Light and fast ([micron] = ca. 84-88); V/mD, P/mD; 15 pages.

6. "L'age mur." Instrumental; contrapuntal; 3 pages; attacca to "Epilogue."

7. "Epilogue: Jessie Lipscomb visits Camille Claudel, Montdevergues Asylum, 1929." A major; [C#.sub.4]-[G.sub.5]; Tess: M; 4/4, 3/4, 6/8, Brightly ([crotchet] =ca. 108); V/M, P/M-mD; 7 pages.

The French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) began her studies and work in Paris at age eighteen and two years later was working in the workshop of the famous sculptor, Auguste Rodin, who soon made her his model, muse, and lover. The relationship lasted fourteen years, though Claudel cut off intimacy after an unwanted abortion in 1892. She lived and worked alone in her own workshop for several years and was able to show some of her works, but in the early years of the twentieth century she appeared to become mentally ill, accusing Rodin of stealing some of her ideas. Her family, prominent in French literary and political life, had never approved of her artistic life or her lifestyle, and in 1913 they had her "voluntarily" committed to an asylum where she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Even though the hospital staff regularly advised the family to release her, they refused. She lived the last thirty years of her life in the asylum, dying there at age seventy-nine. No member of her family ever visited her except for her brother every few years. No one ever claimed her remains. She was buried in a communal grave at the hospital.

The poems of this poignant and quite long song cycle appear to be written as though Claudel herself were writing from the asylum. The title of each movement is the title of one of Claudel's sculptures, and each poem imagines her thoughts as she remembers the work. The music is tonal throughout and is built on a few motifs in the vocal line with patterned accompaniments that reflect the emotional tone of each text.

"Awakening" is an instrumental prelude that sets the tone for what is to come. "Rodin" opens with the three-note motif that will be heard in various guises throughout the work sounding over a sustained trill in the left hand. Camille wakens from a dream about Rodin, wondering whether there was ever a time when he really wanted her to know him. The vocal line, a combination of syllabic and melismatic setting, floats over a flowing, fairly thin textured accompaniment that is always moving and shifting harmonies--reflecting the uncertainty in the text.

"La Valse" moves quickly through a long and somewhat agitated introduction into a waltz that underlies the sustained vocal line. The various divisions of the beat moving steadily onward carry the long vocal lines that plead for the consolation of beauty that will allow the forgetting that "every dance of love is mingled with regret." The music reflects the incredible sense of motion in the sculpture itself.

The sculpture "Shakuntala" (sometimes called "Abandonment" or "The Kiss") recalls a great love story from the Mahabharata in which the beautiful Shakuntala marries a young king and then is abandoned and forgotten by him. The parallels between this story and the Claudel-Rodin love story are easy to see. The song opens with a forceful chordal figure that announces the vocal entrance, a melismatic phrase setting the name "Shakuntala!" The agitated accompaniment figures propel the vocal line that moves in sometimes jagged phrases, sometimes long melismas, and sometimes sustained phrases. It is the story of a woman who does not know who she is before the relationship and finds that it is too late to go back after tragedy has altered her completely.

"La petite chatelaine" is the sculpture of the head of a young child. In this movement, Camille calls to the child whom she aborted at Rodin's urging--"Do you know who I am? ... Can you hear my voice?/ The voice of your mother?" The movement is gentle, "like a fragile minuet," with sustained and melismatic vocal lines over a moving two-voice texture in the accompaniment. Her madness appears in this poem and in the next.

"The Gossips" is a famous sculpture of three women sitting at a table with their heads close together, as if they are talking with one another. The poem reflects the constant noise and movement of all the other people in the asylum as Camille is absorbed in her own disjointed thoughts. Her head is so full of ideas, and the asylum is so full of strange people, that her mind aches, and she wonders "What is the secret suspended in the air? ... Is it him?" A light, fast, repeated accompaniment pattern in sixteenths in the right hand over staccato eighths in the left evokes the agitation in the sculptor's mind and in her surroundings as she sings long phrases of description and questioning.

"L'age mur," Claudel's most famous work and one with at least two different interpretations is a bronze sculpture depicting a young woman imploring a man not to leave her as he moves away, led by another, older woman. This is a contrapuntal instrumental movement, slow and sinuous, that rises to a forceful climax before subsiding to a return of the opening motif of the whole work.

The "Epilogue" describes a visit by her old friend from student days, Jesse Lipscomb, that actually took place at Montdevergues Asylum in 1929. After normal conversation and memories of old times and a photograph of them together, Claudel says "Thank you for remembering me." It is conversational in tone with short vocal phrases over a "playful" accompaniment figure, ending this tragic story on an incongruously light note. This work would be a tour de force for an advanced singer and best performed with string quartet, as the colors of the strings would make the somewhat repetitive accompaniment figures more alive.

ABBREVIATION KEY: Diff = difficulty level; V = voice; P = piano; E = easy; mE = moderately easy; M = medium; mD = moderately difficult; D = difficult; DD = very difficult; Tess = tessitura; LL = very low; L = low; mL = moderately low; M = medium; mH = moderately high; H = high; HH = very high; CR = covers range; CS = covers staff; X = no clear key center.

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Author:	Carman, Judith
Publication:	Journal of Singing
Article Type:	Book review
Date:	Jan 1, 2013
Words:	1223
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