Fretwork

The Fellowship of the Stretched String

Scored for mezzo-soprano (or counter-tenor) and five viols (treble, two tenors and two basses), this setting of a poem specially written by Stephen Tunnicliffe was commissioned by Fretwork to mark the 350th anniversary of Purcell’s birth. The poem is essentially a celebration of the experience of ensemble string-playing from the perspective of a participant (the poet is himself a keen amateur ‘cellist). It also contains various classical allusions which evoke some of the poetic imagery of Purcell’s time, and references to Dido and Euridice are mirrored in the music: Dido by a quote from her lament in Purcell’s ‘Dido & Æneas’, and Euridice by an appearance of the first phrase of Orpheus’s famous aria in Gluck’s ‘Orfeo’, ‘Che farò senza Euridice’.

The work as a whole could be regarded as a chamber cantata in four main sections. The first is declamatory in vocal style while the instruments make extensive use of the downward octave scale which introduces Purcell’s verse anthem ‘Rejoice in the Lord Alway’. The second section is a more formal aria, the two stanzas of which are introduced by the Dido quotation. This recurs between the two stanzas and again at the end of the section. There follows an energetic fugue based on the Dido theme in which the singer participates by adding an extra and independent part evoking an image of polyphonic music as a ‘web of sound, a living tapestry’, referred to in the text. The final section begins with the ‘Orfeo’ quote (perhaps Orpheus could be regarded as a founder-member of the ‘Fellowship of the Stretched String’) which is accompanied by a figure based on the ground from Purcell’s own ‘Music for a While’. Gradually the way is prepared for a return of the descending octave scale, and the whole cantata ends with the proposition that music is as much concerned with dance as it is with song.

John Joubert, January 2009