Så kort ein sommar menneska har – Songs by Gisle Kverndokk

THE BEAUTY OF THE PERISHABLE

«So short is the summer we all have” is a collection of songs written by the composer Gisle Kverndokk and performed by some of Norway’s foremost artists – mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland and the pianist Nils Anders Mortensen. 

Gisle Kverndokk is known as one of Norway’s leading composers of musical theatre in both opera and musical. This release unites several of the genres Kverndokk has worked on over the years: opera, musical, show and theatrical music. Common to them is Kverndokk’s love of melody and poetry. The lyrics are taken from the Norwegian poets Liv Holtskog and Herman Wildenvey. A song cycle is based on lyrics from «Ruth Maier’s Diary,» the diaries of the young Jewish refugee who came to Norway during World War II. These texts, written by Maier about her close friend, the poet Gunvor Hofmo, are strong and luminous, especially poignant considering Maier’s tragic fate as a Holocaust victim.

William Shakespeare‘s famous sonnets are also turned into a new song cycle where love, eroticism and jealousy are pervasive themes. A song from the musical «The World Around the World in 80 Days», with lyrics by Øystein Wiik, is about freedom. The album ends with «Ave Verum», a tribute to Jesus’ body.

Summer is a recurring theme. The bright summer. The light that gives life but eventually turns into darkness – the summer that passes into autumn. The cycle of life and nature. Liv Holtskog’s poem «The summer of life is but fleeting» tells us that everything is perishable. Summer is short. Life is short. Yet as Ruth Maier writes, «The days get brighter when you love someone.» Shakespeare writes «Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?» in sonnet 18, while in sonnet 33 he describes how the sun is darkened by clouds when his beloved deceives him. «After spring and summer, autumn crushes it all, heavy and hard and cold…» Wildenvey writes in his poem «Don’t Ask For Love.» This album is a tribute to summer, light, love, poetry and melody. Gisle Kverndokk has known Marianne Beate Kielland for many years, and they have long had a wish to make an album together. Kverndokk has composed several of the songs for Marianne Beate & Nils.

So short is the summer we all have — Songs by Gisle Kverndokk

Melody is something I have been passionate about throughout my career as a composer. Crafting a melody that is captivating yet simultaneously original and unpredictable. What, exactly, makes a melody "good"? I've been looking into this for years. From studying Palestrina's strict rules, all the way to studying the American songwriters who created the great "Evergreens" catalogue. Writing for the voice is of great interest to me — especially musical drama. Throughout my years as a composer, I've composed songs. Everything from opera arias to simple songs. This album unites several of the genres I've worked on. The songs are based on opera, musicals, theatre, folk song programs and poetry evenings. What unites them is my love for poetry. And on this album, you will make the acquaintance of some of the poets I admire the most.

Summer is the main theme you'll sense here. The bright summer. The light that gives life, but which eventually turns into darkness — the summer that passes into autumn. The cycle of life and nature. Liv Holtskog's poem "So short is the summer we all have" tells us that everything is perishable. Summer is short. Life is short. But as Ruth Maier writes: "The days get brighter when you're in love with someone." Shakespeare writes "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", while in sonnet 33 he describes how the sun is darkened by clouds when his beloved deceives him. In his poem "Don't Ask For Love" Wildenvey writes: "After a spring and a summer, autumn crushes it all — heavy and hard and cold."

Liv Holtskog (1934–2014) was the first living artist I knew. Liv lived her whole life on the Holtskog family farm in Gvarv, Telemark. My great-grandmother Bergit Holtskog also grew up there, and my father and Liv were second cousins. So I knew Liv all my life, and I started early on to set her poems to music. We eventually created many poetry and musical programs together. She took me to Oslo where she often read her work at Det Norske Teatret, and thus I got to meet many of the significant Norwegian poets of the time. In 1987 we put together the show "From Telemark to the World" at Det Norske Teatrets Scene 2 together with Liv's daughter Astrid. Liv read her poems, I performed my own music on piano and flute, and Astrid sang our new songs. All three of us in Telemark folk costumes.

In 1979, Liv published her poetry collection "So short is the summer we all have". The title poem from this collection is I believe one of the finest poems in Norwegian poetry. It shows Liv's pictorial style at its best; how she uses nature as a metaphor for life. It's a sumptuous description of how nature lives, dies and is re-created. Liv lived close to nature and always took her inspiration from it. When I was asked by Josefine Viseklubb in 2016 to attend their commissioned work night, Liv Holtskog's poems were the first thing I thought of. And I summoned the courage to set my favorite poem to music. I also created the melody for the beautiful poem "Even So You Are Here", which describes how a person who has passed away still exists: "in the breath we breathe and all plants covered in dew". In addition, the singer Liv Unni Larsson Undall and I performed songs from the show in 1987; "Longing" and "Song". The latter is also a poem about the cycle of nature and life.

At Det Norske Teatret I have frequently collaborated with the actor and singer Tone Ringen. Tone is passionate about poetry, and for several years gave a regular monthly performance, "Words over the fence", in which she addressed various themes or focused on one poet. I often played and wrote new music for these programs. "Don't Ask For Love" hails from a show that focused on Herman Wildenvey. Tone and I premiered this at Drammen Teater in 1998. This is a poem about whether love lasts. It ebbs and flows like the seasons.

It was also Tone Ringen who first introduced me to "Ruth Maier's Diary" and Gunvor Hofmo's poetry.

Ruth Maier was born in 1920 and grew up in Vienna in a cultural and bourgeois home, and as a young girl she was enthusiastic for the arts, for literature, for the theatre. But because she was Jewish, she had to flee Vienna when Hitler Germany annexed Austria. She came to Norway in 1939, lived with a host family in Lillestrøm, soon took her high school diploma and began studying at the Arts and Crafts School. She was extraordinarily gifted both as a writer and a painter, and kept a diary all her life. In Norway, she met a twin soul, the young poet Gunvor Hofmo. They had a brief and stormy love affair, before Ruth was arrested and deported along with the Norwegian Jews, and killed in the gas chamber of Auschwitz on December 1, 1942. She was 22 years old.

Gunvor Hofmo kept her diaries, and in 2007 these were edited, translated and published by Jan Erik Vold. "Ruth Maier's Diary" made a strong impression on me when I read it, and together with librettist Aksel-Otto Bull I have created a chamber musical based on this book. Out of the musical I have created the song cycle "Ruth Maier in Memoriam" based on Ruth's poems, prose from her letters and diaries, and a poem by Gunvor Hofmo.

The songs form a kind of life cycle for Ruth. It opens with two Impressionist poems: "Impressionist Image" and "Spring Night." Both written at Lillestrøm in 1939 in German and translated by Jan Erik Vold. They are characterised by her loneliness and longings.

"To a Girlfriend" describes the meeting with Gunvor. It's like they've always known each other.

"All the Days Get Brighter" are diary notes from January 1941 and excerpts from letters to her sister Judith who has made it to England. She has met Gunvor at work on a farm at Biri, and she is in love.

"All Things Are Drawing Too Close" are diary notes from when she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Ullevål Hospital. The meeting with Gunvor was strong. She had been so lonely in Norway and suddenly it all changed. She meets the love of her life, a woman who understands her. After a few weeks she breaks down and Gunvor helps her be admitted to Ullevål. There she spends her time observing and in conversation with fellow patients, writing and drawing. She feels everything much stronger; "All the things are drawing so close to me. They're burning." This is reminiscent of one of Gunvor's most famous poems, "From Another Reality", where she writes:

Things were too close, so I burn through and stand on the other side of them.

"The Words" is one of the first poems Gunvor Hofmo published; July 19, 1941 in "Magasinet for alle". Ruth cut it out and pasted it into her diary. I see this poem as a declaration of love to Ruth, her love of the words and of their shared dream of living off and for art. Aksel-Otto Bull and I have written the introduction to this song based on diary notes. It's Gunvor's response when Ruth doubts whether she is a good enough and dedicated artist.

"Nothing Exists" is written at the cabin of Gunvor's family at Nesodden in July 1942. I experience this poem as a sign of her resignation, her sense of emptiness, and her idea of what is going to happen to her. When she was arrested on the night of November 26, she gave no resistance, and she told her girlfriends at the dorm in Dalsbergstien, where she had moved: "I'll never come back." She would be with her own, with the Jews: "I'll stand with them. However it goes."

The opera "Around the World in 80 Days" was written for the opening of the new Opera House in Oslo, and premiered in 2010. In 2016, a new, revised version, now as a musical, premiered in yet another brand new opera house: Landestheater Linz in Austria. Librettist Øystein Wiik has created a version of Jules Verne's story, in which Phileas Fogg and his French servant Passepartout travel not only around the world, but also the opera world around. In every place they arrive, famous opera characters appear who create drama: Hanna Glawari, the merry widow, in Paris, Tosca in Rome, Salome in Suez, La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) in San Francisco, and they are transported across the Atlantic by the Flying Dutchman. In China, they are sentenced to death by Princess Turandot. To save them, Indian princess Aouda and detective Fionula Fix sew a silk dragon to be used to save Fogg and Passepartout from the guillotine. In Oslo it was the children's choir that sang "Only Dragons Are Free" while this happened. In Linz, we turned this into an aria for Aouda. "Only Dragons Are Free" is based on a Taoist proverb, in which the dragon — which has scales on its body, sprays fire and flies across the sky — is a symbol of freedom. The silk dragon Aouda builds is a metaphor for this.

In 2014 I was asked to make music for a production at Det Norske Teatret based on Shakespeare's sonnets. It was actor and director Ola B. Johannessen who wrote and directed this performance on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. Together with the actors Ingrid Jørgensen and Oddgeir Thune he told the stories and backgrounds of the sonnets, which were accompanied by lute, harpsichord and recorders. When Marianne Beate Kielland wanted to record an album of my songs, I wanted to collect these sonnets in a cycle. Since they were written for Norwegian translations, I turned them into Shakespeare's original English, and several of the songs that were just fragments were transformed into whole songs, with piano accompaniment.

Sonnet 18 is probably Shakespeare's most famous sonnet. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" has been set to music many times. My melody quickly emerged and became the main theme of our performance. The sonnet pays homage to the beauty of a friend or lover. It is speculated whether it was a man or a woman. But throughout the sonnets he describes a young, beautiful man, whom he loves. At the same time, he also had women as erotic partners. All of it while he was married to his wife Anne Hathaway.

In Sonnet 3, "Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest…", Shakespeare asks a young man if he can look himself in the mirror and have the conscience to go through life without having children. That there's a woman out there who's then being cheated to be a mother. If he dies single, his image will die with him.

Sonnet 9, "Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye…", is also about why this young man can go through life unmarried and childless. Is it for fear that when he dies, he will let a woman be widowed, full of tears?

Sonnet 128, "How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st…" is a very erotic poem. Shakespeare is jealous of the keys when his beloved plays on the spinet. He wants to kiss the hand that plays. My music is a pastiche on a baroque-inspired invention, while the singing voice "makes love" with the keys.

Sonnet 129, "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame", is also about sexual desire, yet is a contrast to No. 128's merry, flirtatious style. It is a much darker poem, in which Shakespeare describes sexual activity as shameful, as an untamed and unbridled desire. Men will always engage in sexual activity that eventually leads them to hell. Yet they do it again and again.

Sonnet 23, "As an unperfect actor on the stage…" is about how Shakespeare is lost for words when he meets the beautiful young man he loves. He's like an actor on stage who doesn't know his lines.

It was Ola B. Johannessen's idea that I should use the melody from Sonnet no. 18 with Sonnet 33, "Full many a glorious morning have I seen". The sonnets are designed with the same number of lines, the same meter. So really, you can use the same melody on them all! In this sonnet, Shakespeare describes how the sun is shadowed by the clouds, as a metaphor for his beloved, the young man, deceiving him. Thus in this sonnet the melody receives a more hurtful expression.

Shakespeare is said to have been caught in a threesome drama between a beautiful young man and a dark woman, "The Dark Lady." It is speculated that Sonnet 144, "Two loves I have of comfort and despair…", is about these two. But there is also a different interpretation: that it describes Shakespeare's inner conflict as an artist. A passion both for safety and for hopelessness. One corrupts the other.

— Notes: Gisle Kverndokk · English translation: David Dawson