Sven Ingo Koch: Songs of Love

1. Mille (anonymous)

2. Tithonos, based on a poem by Jan Wagner

3. Hip-hop

4. Love, based on a poem by Steffen Popp

5. Prélude (#20) (solo violin)

6. Lullaby, based on a poem by Gottfried von Neifen

7. Mille regretz (anonym)

 

The desire to write love songs for violin and vocal ensemble arose from my close collaboration with the violinist Sara Cubarsi and my exploration of Renaissance love chansons–particularly those by Josquin and de Rore. Subtle motifs from these chansons have found their way, almost imperceptibly, into my songs.

I selected the poems set to music–ranging from medieval to contemporary–with the aim of achieving great textual diversity. They describe different situations of love: requited or unrequited love, unhappy (for the most part) or happy love; a mother’s love and worries.

 

My cycle begins (and ends) with a setting of the text that Josquin used for his ‘Mille regretz’. The narrator mourns his beloved and wishes to end his life–in the first song, I have set this for violin and three high voices. This is followed by a setting of the poem ‘Tithonos’ by Jan Wagner for bass and viola. Tithonos’s beloved, Eon, the goddess of the dawn, implores Zeus to grant Tithonos eternal life, but forgets to ask for eternal youth at the same time. And whilst Eon remains young, Tithonos grows older, indeed, withers away more and more, until ultimately all that remains of him is a quivering bladder, a whispering mass, a chirping clockwork mechanism. A poem rich in musical imagery, from which the formal development of my song has emerged.

 

In my cycle, this is followed by a ‘hip-hop’ piece (or rather a quartet with distant references to such a style) consisting solely of exclamations, for violin and three male voices, which in turn is followed by a setting of Stefan Popp’s ‘Liebe’: in this poem, the object of adoration initially reacts with defiance to the adoration of his admirer.

I contrast this somewhat theatrically conceived tutti scene with a short prélude for solo violin, which draws musical inspiration from Chopin’s Piano Prélude No. 20. Chopin probably composed this whilst staying in Mallorca with George Sand.

 

Gottfried von Neifen’s lullaby forms a stark contrast to this (his) Prélude: a mother is torn between love and–above all–what she perceives as ‘motherly duties’ on the one hand, and on the other, the desire to go out and dance. I was astonished when I discovered this medieval text. Soprano and violin form a duo.

My composition concludes with a second ‘reading’ of the text from ‘Mille regretz’–now for violin and the full chorus–which provides the overarching structural framework.

 

Just as the texts and their musical settings interact in contrasting ways, the violin and the vocal ensemble form a counterpoint, yet they also often blend together or interplay in response to the respective textual contexts. Microtonal passages on the violin alternate with non-microtonal passages sung by the vocalists. I take great pleasure in composing a sequence of pieces which, in their heterogeneity, shed light on one another.
(Sven-Ingo Koch)

 

My ‘Songs of Love’ were commissioned by the Kunststiftung NRW and are dedicated to Sara Cubarsi.