Postlude (2024)

Postlude

When the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment approached me to be part of this wonderful project, me and three other composers (Electra Perivolaris, Freya Waley-Cohen and Errollyn Wallen) creating orchestral pieces inspired by Fanny Mendelssohn’s piano cycle Das Jahr), it was no-brainer. I had wanted for some time to explore Fanny’s music more and an opportunity to learn how to write for 19th century orchestral instruments by the very best players was an exciting prospect.

The creative process began with a session from OAE principals on how their instruments differed from 21st Century ones. It soon became very clear that I would get the best result if I embraced their unique beauty and idiosyncrasies by writing for them idiomatically.

Although Das Jahr reflects on the twelve months of the year it was the ‘Nachspiel’ (Postlude) that I fell in love with – at only 2.5 minutes it covers a huge range of emotion and stylistic intrigue. The music alternates very quickly (sometimes only 2 bars at a time) between what to me sounds like a wistful melody in A minor and then solemn but majestic phrases of a circular, Bach chorale (further elaborated on by Johannes Steurlein). Fanny would have heard (and played herself) organ improvisations between chorale phrases at church.

My fantasy on this piece starts, as does Fanny’s, with Wistful 1 and a solo A but I take it further, with the piano building on that note until Chorale 1 bursts into life. The melody of the first chorale phrase becomes a jaunty accompaniment and the chorale goes through several transpositions (also a feature in Fanny’s original) before woodwinds and strings take up the Wistful 2 yearning melody, as a gentle dream.

In Chorale 2, the piano once again turns the next chorale phrase into a leisurely semi-quaver accompaniment, alternating with heartbeat-like clusters of the same notes. Each orchestral section takes their turn with the chorale. In Wistful 3 I take Fanny’s love of transposition onto a new level, with a sneaky side-step from A minor into D flat major. Here, the brass takes her original theme over chromatic woodwind sighs. In Chorale 3, we return to the safe haven that is E minor, the strings have the chorale melody as a 7/8 quaver accompaniment. The chorale appears in cross-rhythm and yearning counter-melody emerges from brass and strings.

Wistful 4 is a retrograde Wistful 2, a little sadder but Fanny’s wistful melody (still the right way round) optimistically moves higher and higher until we enter the forest, in Chorale 4. This movement is inspired by Fanny’s songs on the theme of the German Romantic Forest and the birds she might have heard in those woodlands. Again, the chorale melody becomes a running quaver accompaniment as brass and upper woodwind provide ornithological embellishment, with the original chorale down in the lower strings and winds.

As do Fanny’s and Bach’s original, Wistful 5 and Chorale 5 refer back to the beginning but in a mightier and more elaborate way. We finish with Fanny’s wistful opening A minor theme made happy with an additional major 3rd. I am hugely grateful to the OAE and its wonderful principals and pianist Olga Pashchenko who have all collaborated intensively and patiently with me – it has been quite a steep but intriguing learning curve and has left me wanting to write more for these fabulous instruments.

RP 31.07.24