Down in the Valley (Opera)
| Work data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Down in the valley |
| Original language: | English |
| Music: | Kurt Weill |
| Libretto : | Arnold Sundgaard |
| Premiere: | July 15, 1948 |
| Place of premiere: | Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana |
| Playing time: | about 40 minutes |
| Place and time of the action: | Birmingham, Alabama; Time not specified |
| people | |
Down in the Valley is a one-act folk opera in eight scenes by Kurt Weill with a libretto by Arnold Sundgaard . The work known today is the revised and extended version of an unpublished radio opera from 1945, in which five American folk songs are arranged. The eponymous ballad Down in the Valley is also known as the Birmingham Jail .
action
The opera takes place in Birmingham, Alabama, on the southern edge of the Appalachian Mountains . The time is not specified, but various clues such as the execution of Brack on the gallows, the weekly hoedown dance evening and the absence of newer technical inventions suggest the second half of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century. Since the narration of the events is not in an orderly sequence, they should be presented here chronologically for better understanding, while the adjacent graphic illustrates the sequence within the opera.
- (A) Since getting to know each other better at a church event, Jennie Parsons and Brack Weaver have found great love (3rd scene).
- (B) Her father wants Jennie to be at the side of the much older and seedy businessman Thomas Bouché. Through this connection he hopes for an economic upswing and thus an end to his financial difficulties (5th scene).
- (C) Despite her father's wishes, Jennie decides to go to the dance with Brack and reject Bouché (4th scene).
- (D) There is a solid mix between the two men; the drunken Bouché dies in a fierce duel from a stab wound from his own knife (6th scene).
- (E) Brack is arrested and sentenced to death by hanging for murder. In prison he hopes in vain for a last letter from his Jennie. The night before the execution, he escapes to see her again and to hear one last expression of love from her (1st scene).
- (Q) Jennie is also desperate, and her father's attempts to appease her cannot comfort her with the pain. Her joy is all the greater when Brack appears at her place at night (2nd scene).
- (G) They profess their eternal love for one another and think back on meeting, but the police are looking for Brack and they must flee. At dawn he finally gives in to his fate and returns to the judiciary (7th scene).
- (H) In prison he is facing the execution of the sentence (8th scene).
Scenes and numbers
Down in the Valley is divided into eight scenes following a prologue-like introduction, which not only take place in different locations, but also at different times due to the anachrony.
| scene | number | occupation |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction / prolog | Down in the valley | Narrator, choir |
| Scene 1 - In Birmingham Prison | Where is the one who will mourn me when I'm dead? | Brack |
| Scene 2 - in front of the Parsons house | Brack Weaver, my true love and The Lonesome Dove | Jennie |
| 3rd scene - In the church | The Little Black Train | Choir |
| 4th scene - in front of the church | Hop up, my ladies | Brack, Jennie |
| Scene 5 - In the house of the Parsons | Hop up, my ladies | Bouché |
| Scene 6 - At the dance | Hoe-Down (based on Sourwood Mountain ) | Jennie, Brack, Bouché |
| 7th scene - in front of the Parsons house | The Lonesome Dove (reprise) | Jennie |
| Scene 8 - In Birmingham Prison | Down in the valley | Choir, Jennie, Brack |
layout
music
Of the five processed folk songs, the eponymous ballad Down in the Valley also dominates within the opera. The melody, which consists of two short semi-arcs, can be heard a total of 19 times with different scoring and thus forms the musical-narrative framework of a thoroughly composed opera. The function of the narrator and choir is to link individual scenes with one another through variations. Furthermore, Weill integrates four traditional songs at a thematically appropriate place, such as the spiritual The Little Black Train when Brack and Jennie meet at a so-called prayer meeting or Hop Up, My Ladies , while the two look forward to the dance evening together and Hoe-Down when they finally arrive at the event. Weill uses the image of a lone dove in The Lonesome Dove symbolically for Jennie's pure and eternal love for Brack, which will outlive even his death. In the new composition of two songs in the style of traditional ballads ( Where is the one who will mourn me when I'm gone? And Brack Weaver, my true love ), Weill incorporates the folk song idiom so that they can hardly be distinguished from the borrowed original material are. In particular, the ballad Down in the Valley is more and more clearly influenced by Weill's handwriting as the opera progresses, but the other songs also all show characteristic features of his arrangement. A mixed harmonics typical for him can be recognized, in which a tonal center is merely circled and the sound is thus in a free tonality ( Down in the Valley in the 8th scene, 2nd verse: melody in G major, motif in C major) moves. The majority of the pieces have a closed shape, as they still have a tonal structure at the beginning and end. Weill achieves tonal ambiguity within the individual numbers by employing various design elements. His usual methods include, for example, leaving notes or adding notes to sixth chords ( Down in the Valley in the prologue, last chord: C major with a added sixth), heightened layers of thirds ( Down in the Valley in the prologue, transition to the 1st scene : Layering of the three thirds of -f, f-a -flat, a-flat -c) and so-called false basses ( Down in the Valley in the prologue, 1st verse: second bass plays an f throughout, also during the dominant C major), as well the semitone instability to resolve a chord ( Where is the one who will mourn me when I'm gone? in the 1st scene, 1st stanza: chromatic progressions lead from the tonic via the dominant back to the tonic) or sudden shifts into one new key ( Down in the Valley in the prologue, 2nd stanza: F major; 3rd stanza: A flat major). With the help of these and other tricks, Weill not only provides the processed folk songs with specific harmonies, but also presents the entire opera in a typical Weill sound.
libretto
The working basis and starting point for the libretto is the folk song Down in the Valley or Birmingham Jail , which reproduces the thoughts of a prisoner while he is hoping for a last letter from his lover before his execution. Sundgaard complements this traditional song in that it initially gives the lyric self the role of protagonist: Brack Weaver. Furthermore, as the central opera plot, he constructs a corresponding prehistory that brings about Brack's imprisonment, and to this end he equips the folk songs with new texts in places. Sundgaard makes use of the stylistic device of turning back on a double level by narrating the events anachronically in two steps . For example, a narrator opens the opera in the manner of a prologue with the announcement that Brack Weaver was hanged for the murder of Thomas Bouché and explains in a first analepse how Brack escaped from prison the night before his execution and with him for a few last hours Jennie Parsons spends. Within this description, Jennie and Brack introduce a second, resolving flashback, in which they remember how they got to know each other and then, in cinematic style, trace the momentous events before and on the night of the murder. Some of the text passages in Down in the Valley show features of a characteristic dialectal coloring of the Appalachian region, the so-called Appalachian English: “Hold it, young'un.” - “Kin yuh hear me?” - “I been settin 'here. "-" Purty gal always needs protection. "-" Yer makin 'a break, ain't yuh? "
history
Backgrounds of origin
The first version of Down in the Valley was written back in 1945 and was originally designed for radio. The impetus for this came from Olin Downes and Charles MacArthur , who were planning a radio series called Your Songs, America . Short operas based on American folk songs were intended to make this traditional music more popular again in a dramatized form. Weill and Sundgaard accepted the task and wrote an opera of around 20 minutes in which they used five folk songs ( Down in the Valley; The Lonesome Dove; The Little Black Train; Hop Up, My Ladies; Sourwood Mountain ). The radio series never came about, however, because no powerful sponsors were found. About three years later, in the spring of 1948, Weill's former publisher Hans Heinsheimer approached him with a request for a play that could be played by students in an opera class. Weill then worked with Sundgaard to redesign the previously unpublished radio opera to meet the requirements of a non-professional, student stage performance. To do this, they extended Down in the Valley to an adequate playing time of around 40 minutes by inserting scenes, expanding the dialogues and adding music to them, as well as two songs newly composed in traditional folk style ( Where is the one who will mourn me when I'm gone? And Brack Weaver, my true love ). On the other hand, they simplified the opera in that the requirements for scenery, costumes and technology are deliberately kept low and the orchestration can be varied depending on how the instruments can be cast. On July 15, 1948, the revised stage version was first performed in the auditorium of Indiana University, Bloomington, with Kurt Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya among the audience.
reception
The premiere was very popular, and just three weeks later the University of Michigan showed another production of Down in the Valley on August 7, 1948 . This was broadcast nationwide by the radio station NBC , so that the opera finally found its way onto the radio. NBC-TV also showed a studio production of Down in the Valley in 1950 as the first edition of a television opera series. In the following two years, the Schirmer music publisher, which sold the piano score, recorded almost 300 productions, including in Europe. Further performances in Asia and Australia were planned, and with around 6,000 performances in the first nine years after the premiere, Down in the Valley was Kurt Weill's second most performed composition for the stage after the Threepenny Opera . The performances took place and are favored by the simplicity of the opera, primarily in the school context, which is why it can be assigned to the genre school opera . However, this should not be equated with the concept of a teaching piece without hesitation . With regard to the playing time of a stage performance of Down in the Valley there are different statements, they vary from 35 minutes to 45 minutes.
Discography (selection)
- Weill, Kurt: The Kurt Weill Classics. Lady in the Dark, Down in the Valley . LP, RCA Victor 1964, LPV-503.
- Weill, Kurt: The Yes Man, Down in the Valley . CD, Capriccio 1991, 60 020-1.
- Weill, Kurt: Lady in the Dark, Down in the Valley (= NBC Television Opera Theater; 1954/1950 Television Cast). CD, Sepia 2005, 1052.
Web links
- Information on Kurt and Lenya Weill, specifically on Down in the Valley: The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music
literature
- Dissertation on Weill's compositional methods with a focus on his work from 1927 to 1933:
- Tobias Faßhauer: An apart in the unaparten. Investigations into the song style of Kurt Weill (= D83; dissertation Technische Universität Berlin 2005). Pfau, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-89727-333-7 .
- Detailed analysis of Weill's increasing redesign of the title song Down in the Valley within the opera:
- John Graziano: Musical Dialects in Down in the Valley . In: Kim H. Kowalke (ed.):
- A new Orpheus. Essays on Kurt Weill . Yale University Press, New Haven et al. a. 1986, ISBN 0-300-03514-4 , pp. 297-320. Therein pp. 302-316.
- In-depth explanations of Weill's musical means in terms of tonality and harmony:
- Gottfried Wagner: Weill and Brecht. The musical time theater (= dissertation University of Vienna 1977: The musical alienation in the stage works of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht ). Kindler, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-463-00706-1 . Therein pp. 143–154.
- Weill, Kurt (1948): Down in the Valley . Vocal score. Schirmer, New York 1948, item number GS 33768. (Notes)
- David Drew: Kurt Weill. A handbook. Faber & Faber, London 1987, ISBN 0-571-13573-0 .
- David Farneth, Elmar Juchem, David Stein: Kurt Weill. A life in pictures and documents. Ullstein, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89834-004-X .
- Willi Gundlach : Educational music of two worlds. Kurt Weill: The Yes Man - Down in the Valley. In: Hermann J. Kaiser u. a. (Ed.): On the pedagogical use of music. Schott, Mainz a. a. 1993, ISBN 3-7957-0244-5 , pp. 253-261.
- Stephen Hinton: Weill's Musical Theater. Stages of Reform. University of California Press, Berkeley et al. a. 2012, ISBN 0-520-27177-7 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e See Drew 1987, pp. 363-365.
- ↑ a b c d e f See Gundlach 1993, pp. 258–260.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h See Hinton 2012, pp. 389–397.
- ↑ a b c d e f g See Graziano 1986, pp. 297-300.
- ↑ See Wagner 1977, p. 62.
- ↑ a b c See Wagner 1977, p. 143ff.
- ↑ See Drew 1987, p. 349.
- ↑ a b c d See Farneth et al. 2000, pp. 253-255.
- ^ Information on the works of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music , accessed on April 7, 2018
- ↑ See Weill 1948, preface in the piano reduction.