Night Conjure-Verse

James Joyce (E)

Night Conjure-Verse is a song cycle to two poems by James Joyce. Its world premiere took place in San Francisco in 1966. The first idea and much of the ensuing technical apparatus for the piece came from the poetic image of the second poem, which is a mirror commenting on what has been reflected in it. That idea was to oppose two like voices — a soprano — the 'real' voice (the actual events before the mirror), and a counter-tenor — the 'false' voice (the reflection in the mirror). Both have the same range of notes although a very different tone quality. This had to be modified (because a countertenor is often hard to find) to soprano versus mezzo-soprano.

When I began to compose, the idea of mirror reflection expanded into technical means; that is, both poetic image and technic became, in my mind, the same — a symbiosis I find necessary before I can set any poem. To be specific: musical passages are followed by their mirror versions, in both small details and over long sections; two opposing sonority groups — string quartet verses wind septet employed behind the two opposing voices; extremely high tessitura in general is used in all parts to suggest flashes of light from a mirror. There is frequent splintering of syllables of the text and retrograding of the text.

The setting of the first poem, Simples, I composed last and thought of it as another 'light' poem, although a much softer, more mysterious 'moonlight' in contrast to the glaring mirror reflections of 'A Memory..." It, too, abounds in much retrograded motion (rhythmic and melodic) as well as canonic chasing of similar lines — though here with a more playful, delicate, 'moonlighting' quality.

I composed Night Conjure-Verse like one puts together a mosaic or jigsaw puzzle. At first I gathered together seven or eight notebooks full of little ideas or different version of the same idea, with no idea where they would eventually fit. As the pressure of so much material on my hands 'without a home' increased, so would my instincts suddenly snap different bits together and this, in turn, would suggest other large fittings — and so it went in different spots all over the piece at once. Perhaps the only guiding hand through it all was the text (like the picture of the completed jigsaw on every puzzle cover) to which the different tiny elements would adhere in more and more profusion.

– DAVID DEL TREDICI