I. To the Little House (0:00)
II. Interlude: Vein of Shame (7:28)
III. Kindertotenmusik (10:31)

PROGRAM NOTES

Gretel is in three movements, the first of which is given the subtitle “To the Little House.” The name “Gretel” in the title, of course, refers to the little sister in Hansel and Gretel. As the absence of her brother’s name in the title suggests, however, this work is far from being a retelling of the classic fairy tale.

It is well known that fairy tales are often tinged with dark—even gruesome—undertones. Hansel and Gretel is not an exception: it features heartless parents, attempts at cannibalism and a virtual auto-da-fé. But this 19th century fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm may have an even grimmer undertone.

The original 1812 version of Hansel and Gretel concludes as follows:

Der Vater freute sich als er sie wieder sah, er hatte keinen vergnügten Tag gehabt, seit seine Kinder fort waren, und ward nun ein reicher Mann. Die Mutter aber war gestorben.

The cause of the mother’s death is not mentioned in the story, prompting some commentators to propose that she and the witch are (metaphorically?) the same person—with the implication that Gretel may have committed (metaphorical?) matricide when she pushed the witch into the fiery oven.

The second movement, an interlude entitled “Vein of Shame,” begins and ends with the playback of recordings from the 1993 trial of the Menendez Brothers, who brutally murdered their parents a few years earlier. During the nationally-televised first trial, the brothers’ lawyers introduced the so-called battered-child syndrome as a defense: Lyle and Erik Menendez committed the murders as a result of years of sexual and emotional abuse by their parents. (The “abuse excuse” was not allowed in the retrial and the brothers were subsequently found guilty.)

The third movement, entitled “Kindertotenmusik,” alludes to, and includes quotations from, Gustav Mahler’s 1904 song cycle Kindertotenlieder. The quotes are from the last song “In diesem Wetter!” (“In this weather!”) and are limited to the music roughly corresponding to Mahler’s setting of the following line:

Sie ruh’n als wie in der Mutter Haus, 
(They’re at peace as if in their mother’s house,)

In this song, a father berates himself for having allowed his children out in a storm and then tries to take solace in the belief that they are resting peacefully as if in their mother’s house. Now, doesn’t this sound very much like something that could have gone through the mind of Hansel and Gretel’s father?

If we can make a connection between Kindertotenlieder and Hansel and Gretel in this manner, then maybe we can also add the Menendez Brothers’ case to the mix by imagining Hansel and Gretel making a journey to the witch-mother’s house to avenge themselves for the abuse they had sustained in the past. (Incidentally, while the German word “Kindertotenlieder” is often translated as “Songs on the Death of Children,” the German expression is quite ambiguous in that it can denote anything relating to children and death.)

By pulling these three seemingly disparate threads together, Gretel attempts to give you a glimpse of how one’s childlike innocence gets destroyed, leaving a deep, indelible scar in the individual’s psyche.


PERFORMED BY:

Argento Chamber Ensemble
Conductor - Michel Galante
Flutes - Isabel Gleicher
Oboes - Lillian Copeland
Clarinets - Carol McGonnell
Trumpet - Brad Siroky
Trombone - Jennifer Baker
Percussion - Sean Statser
Piano - Mun-Tzung Chung
Violin - Doori Na
Viola - William Hakim
Cello - Madeline Fayette
Bass - Tristan Kasten-Krause
(Hansel & Gretel recitation: Courtesy of Grace Accidental)

Gretel for Ensemble (Fl., Ob., Cl., Trp., Tbn., Perc., Pf., Vn., Va., Vc., Cb.) (2019-20)

Performed by Carlos Silva (Ensemble DME) during KlexosLab22 in Spain

BREATH | for Solo Clarinet - II (excerpt)

Piece written for and performed by the students from Ourearte, conducted by João Quinteiro.

CHUVA OBLÍQUA | for Ensemble

"Prometheus, in Greek religion, one of the Titans, the supreme trickster, and a god of fire. His intellectual side was emphasized by the apparent meaning of his name, Forethinker. In common belief he developed into a master craftsman, and in this connection he was associated with fire and the creation of mortals."

Enciclopedia Brittanica

Recorded at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien by the prestigious PHACE Ensemble and conducted by Daniel Rueda Blanco, during the Vienna Summer Music Festival 2022.

Prometheus | for Ensemble

PROMETHEUS | for Ensemble - Performed by Ensemble PHACE

“Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing.
We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh.
But in this valley the snow falls silently all day, and out our window
We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house,

(…)

Of cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months
Across the pass and drifted deep in the vale.

(…)

Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course we see the child every day,
We hold out our hands, we touch him shyly, we make offerings to his implacability.
No, the index cannot close. And how shall we survive? We don’t and cannot and will never

(…)

“

The Curtain, Hayden Carruth

Recorded at the Salon Brahms by the famous Irvine Arditti, during the Vienna Summer Music Festival 2022.

THANATOS | for Solo Violin - Performed by Irvine Arditti

EPIMETHEUS | for Wind Orchestra - Excerpt from Rehearsal

Consensus Reality

Concrete Corpses and the Ghosts that they Remember

Burnt Shadows on Broken Mirrors

The Bard Weeps (2023) for vocal sextet SATTBB
Composer: Will Martin
Recording Engineer: Aaron Zimmer
Performers: Kayleigh Sprouse, Emma Tucker, Opal Clyburn-Miller, Will Martin, Christian Schmidt, T.J. Callahan

Text adapted from William Shakespeare, Sonnet 64:

The bard weeps
as he turns his downcast eyes
to the shore
and says:

I have seen by Time's fell hand de-fac'd
the outworn buried age
lofty towers
I see downras'd

When I see the ocean gain 
advantage on the shore
The kingdom of the shore

This thought is
This thought is as
This thought is as death

which cannot choose 
But weep
But weep to have that which it fears to lose

The Bard Weeps (2023)

for tenor voice, clarinet, viola, trumpet, and trombone

Fallen Elm is an homage to the last remaining old American elm tree in Mt. Vernon Place outside of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. The tree fell this past April because its roots could no longer support its canopy. The tree’s falling resulted in a collective mourning in the Mt. Vernon community for both the loss of a mighty, opulent figure of nature, as well as the history and marker of change that the tree represented for Mt. Vernon.

Text:
A solemn hush, a stillness
Silent shadows beneath a shrouded bough A fallen elm
Blinded by the brutal sky
Stark, unbearable brightness
Where once stood a lofty canopy
Only skeletal rings remain

The Bard Weeps (2023)

Will Martin

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