Peter Maxwell Davies – Eight Songs for a Mad King

My last post for the year! And I chose this… A mono drama scored for a baritone, who needs to be able to sing 6 octaves, using extended techniques. Holy crap. That’s intense.

Based on the words of King George III (known for severe mental illness later on in life), this half hour long mono drama was composed by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, with a Libretto by Randolph Stow. Our dear friend George decided that he would try to teach birds to sing… using a mechanical organ. Yep. Davies represents this by making the instruments act as the birds, sounding like they are playing whatever they want, whenever they want, sending the King further into insanity. In other words, his teaching method clearly wasn’t working.

Having to learn this part, would be murder. The accompaniment, provided by the bird-like instruments, is very random and dissonant, which would make it near on impossible for the vocalist to pitch their note. The singer also would have to learn an intense amount of extended techniques including sprechstimme and overtone singing.

Davies has definitely captured the essence of King George’s insanity with the use of dissonance, extended techniques, and well, let’s face it, a creepy as hell group of songs.

Thanks for a great year everyone!!

 

Emma

Peter Maxwell Davies – Eight Songs for a Mad King

This is one of the most bizarre pieces of music I’ve ever heard.

This 8-part composition is based around words uttered by King George III (who in the later stages of life suffered from severe mental illness) and a group of tunes played by a mechanical organ which was actually owned by George III. The King used this organ to try and train birds to sing music. When this composition is being performed, musicians are required to act as the birds, going so far as to perform in bird cages.

The composition is scored for piccolo, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano, harpsichord, and of course voice. As mentioned above, all instruments, along with having their usual accompanying role, also act as the birds that the King is trying to teach to sing. Clearly he is not having much success in his endeavours, as the birds seem all over the place; in fact, they appear to be doing whatever they want. For most of the time instruments (birds) play almost randomly, creating extreme dissonance through vibrato, clashing pitches, rapid glissandos and uneven rhythms. However, there is of course some organization involved in that the instruments reflect and extend whatever it is the King is ranting on about. At various points throughout the composition, the King has conversations with individual musicians/birds. The composition and indeed the performance of it culminates in the King becoming so frustrated that he grabs a violin off one of the musicians/birds and smashes it to pieces. Essentially, as Maxwell Davies puts it, the instruments are ‘projections stemming from the King’s words and music, becoming incarnations of facets of the King’s own psyche.’

And there is something definitely wrong with that psyche. Maxwell Davies has scored an extraordinarily difficult vocal part which involves a range of more than 5 octaves, and requires the vocalist to use a variety of extended techniques such as overtone singing and Sprechstimme (speaking the notes instead of singing them). It would be a mammoth task to learn this; the part is extremely disjunct and involves regular wide leaps, the dynamics and articulation change rapidly, and of course the vocalist would also need to pretend that he was insane. A freakishly weird piece but I would definitely go and see a performance of it.

- Tully

Peter Maxwell Davies- ‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’

Scene from 8 Songs for a Mad King http://www.zeitgenoessische-oper.de

Preface- ‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’ is not music……………..I am sitting here listening to it for the first time as I type this, I can hear the notes being played/sung and I have the score sitting right in front of my face, but I refuse to accept this is music. Nor do I accept that Peter Maxwell Davies is human, for he is not, he is a robot from the year 48697393693 programmed to portray the iminent apocalypse, in a universal language that us humans can understand, so he has adopted Western culture music to give us a glimpse of what hell will sound like when we’re all inevitably consumed by it. Now that we’ve established that, lets begin.

‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’ is the musical equivalent of a bus full of clowns choking, crashing into a fireworks factory containing birds drowning in a sea of rusty knifes. At least that was my initial reaction, as this is not easy listening at all and is a polarising experience. As over the top as my first statement was, I feel I wouldn’t be doing this composition justice by NOT giving it an absolutely ridiculous and over the top (albeit shocking) description, because it is just that. On the creation of the piece, sourced by classicalsource.com:

“The inspiration behind the piece was a musical box, once owned by Sir Stephen Runciman, with which George III had reputedly tried to teach his birds to sing. In Eight Songs the musicians are the birds enclosed in cages; the percussionist is the gaoler and the singer is George III, or perhaps simply an actor who thinks he is the king.”

The plot is about the true story of King George III who went literally mad, as evident by the composition’s abstract nature and dissonant tonality. This piece is an absurd yet brilliantly technical marvel that stresses the limits of both the extremities of vocal range and instrumentation. Julius Eastman’s vocal technique is notable, spanning several octaves and making wide intervalic leaps whilst also building chords, at times screaming the notes or crooning them in a sweet childlike voice, the contrast in his delivery throughout portrays the Kings descent to madness convincingly and is full of character.

The instruments provide the backdrop for the protagonists worsening pysychosis, with abstract rhythm structures (demisemiquavers, triplets etc), constantly changing time signatures,tempos and often abrubtly contrasting dynamics, as chaotic as it may be, it suits the tone perfectly. Some unconventional instruments are used as well to portray key elements in the plot such as mechanical bird song devices and bird call instruments (in relation to George III trying to teach birds to sing) and a didjeridu, which according to Davis, “Functions as a downward extension of the timbre of the ‘crow’.”

I found this to be a rewarding listening experience despite its difficulty and learnt many new ideas and ways of thinking from it. Davis’ ability to take inspiration from a true tale such as George III’s and be able to portray a quite difficult human emotion such as ‘madness’, with all the complexities of an unstable human mind, and be in complete control over how to make your audience react, be it confusion, shock, paranoia, or even laughter (one movement opposes the rest of the piece in an ironic fashion, with simple structure and consonant harmony) is an achievement in its own right. Yet what I learnt most was how to take a source of inspiration or key thematic, and build on it through various ways. Davis’ emulates the relation to birds through not only the instruments, but even visually (one page in the score uses the staves to form the shape of a bird cage) and in one particular instance, in rhythm, as the first movement starts with wooden blocks used to sound like a cuckoo clock, slowly syncing out of time as it progresses. It’s these factors that make ‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’ the brilliantly absurd work of art it was designed to be.

Shannon