This Midnight Hour

The opening to This Midnight Hour is inspired by the character and power of the lower strings of L'Orchestre national d'Île de France. From here, it draws inspiration from two poems – one by Charles Baudelaire and another by Juan Ramón Jiménez. . Whilst it is not intended to depict a specific narrative, my intention is that it will evoke a visual journey for the listener.

La musica - by Juan Ramón Jiménez

iLa musica;
-mujer desnuda,
corriendo loca por la noche pura! -

Jiménez’s poem is very short and concise (translated by Robert Bly):

Music –
a naked woman
running mad through the pure night

This immediately struck me as a strong image and one that I chose to interpret with outbursts of frenetic energy – for example, dividing the strings into sub-groups that play fortissimo staggered descending cascade figures from left to right in stereo effect. This stems from my early explorations of electroacoustic music.

There is also a lot of evocative sensory imagery in Baudelaire’s Harmonie du Soir, the first stanza of which reads as follows (translated by William Aggeler):

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

I riffed on the idea of the melancholic waltz about halfway into This Midnight Hour - I split the viola section in two and have one half playing at written pitch and the other half playing 1/4 tone sharp to emulate the sonority of an accordion playing a Parisian-esque waltz.

— Anna Clyne

Harmonie du soir - by Charles Baudelaire

Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!

Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.

Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige,
Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir;
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.

Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige...
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

Harmonie du soir
translated by William Aggeler:

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
The violin quivers like a tormented heart;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar.

The violin quivers like a tormented heart,
A tender heart, that hates the vast, black void!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar;
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...

A tender heart that hates the vast, black void
Gathers up every shred of the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...
Your memory in me glitters like a monstrance!

“This is no lightweight ‘concert opener’ but a substantial, richly imagistic score, its implicit, montage-like narrative orchestrated with a high degree of imagination.” —Bachtrack

“2015’s This Midnight Hour is a noirish nocturne, its 13 poetry-inspired minutes as packed with ideas as a Strauss or Sibelius tone poem.” —The Arts Desk

“… a strange and beautiful composition with much fire and fury at both ends, and attractive lyricism at its core.” —Belfast Telegraph

“brilliant, lyrical and resonant nocturne” —Classical Voice North America

“admiring, as ever, of Clyne’s clean and canny craftsmanship and discerning sense of orchestral color” —Chicago Classical Review

“an exciting, compelling, filmic work in the style of a symphonic poem ... This is a great piece and a super concert-opener, not to mention a great showpiece for orchestral virtuosity.” —Edinburgh Music Review

“The forcefulness of [Clyne’s] vision, her resourceful exploitation of strikingly extreme and unlikely orchestral colours (the out-of-tune violas that conjure up what sounds like a wheezing concertina), are what gives this work its gritty appeal.” —The Scotsman