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- Simon Bainbridge
Ad Ora Incerta - Four Orchestral Songs from Primo Levi (1994)
- Novello & Co Ltd (World)
Commissioned by the BBC
Winner of the 1997 Grawemeyer Prize for music composition
- 2(pic,afl)+2pic.2+ca.4(2bcl).cbn/4430/3perc/str(16.14.12.10.8)
- mezzo soprano, bassoon
- 35 min
- Primo Levi
- Italian
Programme Note
i. Il canto del corvo
ii. Il tramonto di Fossoli 4 minutes
iii. Lunedì
iv. Buna
My love for Primo Levi's writing began after reading his deeply moving account of survival in "If this is a man" - a chronicle of his life in the Buna concentration camp.
Some years later on a trip to New York, an American composer friend suggested I read the collection of poems dating from 1943 and concluding with those written near the time of his death in the mid 1980s. I was drawn to the terrifying imagery in his poem Buna particularly the opening lines:
In selecting the other three texts that make up the cycle, my concern was in creating an overall form for the four movements, whereby the duration and proportion of each song make up a coherent overall shape.
The first and last movements are lengthy symphonic developments and require full tutti resources from the orchestra. The two inner movements, in contrast, develop the relationship between mezzo-soprano and solo bassoon. In Il tramonto di Fossoli the soloists are matched in continuous two part note-for-note counterpoint against a distant cantus. In Lunedì the voice intones the text as a background to a florid melodic counterpoint from the solo bassoon.
Simon Bainbridge
ii. Il tramonto di Fossoli 4 minutes
iii. Lunedì
iv. Buna
My love for Primo Levi's writing began after reading his deeply moving account of survival in "If this is a man" - a chronicle of his life in the Buna concentration camp.
Some years later on a trip to New York, an American composer friend suggested I read the collection of poems dating from 1943 and concluding with those written near the time of his death in the mid 1980s. I was drawn to the terrifying imagery in his poem Buna particularly the opening lines:
Torn feet and cursed earthThis brought back my own bleak memories of visiting Auschwitz on a cold grey day some years ago. I decided to compose the setting for Buna first and it turned out to be a large sixteen minute slow movement.
The long line in the grey morning.
In selecting the other three texts that make up the cycle, my concern was in creating an overall form for the four movements, whereby the duration and proportion of each song make up a coherent overall shape.
The first and last movements are lengthy symphonic developments and require full tutti resources from the orchestra. The two inner movements, in contrast, develop the relationship between mezzo-soprano and solo bassoon. In Il tramonto di Fossoli the soloists are matched in continuous two part note-for-note counterpoint against a distant cantus. In Lunedì the voice intones the text as a background to a florid melodic counterpoint from the solo bassoon.
Simon Bainbridge
Media
Ad ora incerta: No. 1. Il conto del corvo
Ad ora incerta: No. 2. ll tramonto di Fossoli
Ad ora incerta: No. 3. Lunedi
Ad ora incerta: No. 4. Buna
Scores
Preview the score
Reviews
"...the final and most important work, the song cycle Ad Ora Incerta. In his setting of four poems by Primo Levi meditating on the holocaust, Simon Bainbridge creates a soundscape painfully evocative of bleakeness and desolation. His symbiotic partnering of mezzo soprano with a bassoon soloist was mesmerising:Susan Bibkley delivered the words with the detachment that is Bainbridge's equivalent of Levi's distilled objectivity, the only means for him to fulfill his intensely felt obligation as a survivor to bear witness to the almost unutterable truth of the death camps. Against this, bassoonist Dorian Cooke's threnody gave voice to the anguish of heart and spirit. Throughout the evening, Jac van Steen's authoritative conducting was an inspiration to the BBC NOW, but his realisation of the symphonic scale of Bainbridge's conception was masterly. A harrowing but profoundly affecting performance. "
26th January 2004
"Simon Bainbridge's Ad Ora Incerta, plumbed a depth of tragedy and mourning with the subtlest musical means. When I first heard these settings of Primo Levi's poetic meditations on Auschwitz, they seemed incidently sophisticated as if these unspeakable scenes were being represented in gold thread on spun silk. But on this occasion I was able to pass through that sumptuous surface to something archetypal and utterly stark. Much of the credit for this must go to the performers, particularly the soprano Susan Bickley, whose bleached-out impassive tone was the perfect counterfoil to the music's fevered intensity."
26th January 2004
"The Four Primo Levi Settings are scored for a chamber ensemble and sound equally intense, equally haunting…Required listening if ever there was."
1st December 1999
"These two sets of songs are some of the most ambitious and daring British works of recent times"
16th October 1999
…a full half-hour of music, though seemingly more compact, and surely his finest achievement to date. The last song, “Buna”, had a symphonic breadth and trajectory that was a major compositional tour de force in itself. As the focus of three preceding shorter movements, it gave the piece a rock-like consistency, though spun from the pristine, whirling textures Bainbridge has made his own.
1st March 1995
Discography
Ad Ora Incerta
- LabelNMC
- Catalogue NumberNMC D059
- ConductorMartyn Brabbins
- EnsembleNash Ensemble / BBC Symphony Orchestra
- SoloistSusan Bickley, mezzo soprano; Kim Walker, bassoon
