Dear Clarinet Players, I’d like to tell you about a recent experience which you might be interested to hear about. The Io Passion is a new opera by Sir Harrison Birtwistle. We have just given the first performance at the Aldeburgh Festival last week (11 June 2004). It was particularly significant for me because it brought together my operatic conducting work, my clarinet playing and my long involvement and advocacy of the basset clarinet. Harry and I have been close for very many years both musically and as friends.
The starting point is a room at the front of the right hand side of the stage. On the left hand side further back is the "same room"; both rooms have windows and doors. On the right we view the interior and on the left we look through the window into that room from the outside. The man stands by a lamp post on the left while on the right, the woman makes tea and opens a letter that the man posts through the letterbox. She writes a reply and on another occasion sits in an armchair reading a book on the Greek myth of Io – and falls asleep dreaming.
Their story is about a broken relationship that went wrong on the Greek Island of Lerna earlier that year. It was on that very same island that Zeus had his way with the shepherdess Io. While doing so, Hera appeared and to cover his tracks, he promptly turns Io into a heiffer and himself into a bull.
The composer presents a series of cycles which more or less have the same content albeit different music. The connection with the myth that I’ve talked about occurs through the woman’s dream after she has fallen asleep and the early 20c Magritte like stage through the use of UV paint and lighting, is transformed to antiquity, a scene in which Hermes, Zeus, Io’s father, Io and a gadfly appear. By the way the gadfly, Hera’s doing, is to punish and torment the ravaged Io (now in the shape of a heiffer) for the rest of her life. There is colour, eroticism and humour in these scenes. Eventually modern day and myth become intertwined: "I can’t wake up", says the woman.
I should point out that at the opening because we have two views of the same room, we also need another identical man and woman. There are other things to say but I would now like to write about the music and the instruments.
The band simply consists of a clarinet quintet; a basset clarinet In A and a string quartet (Quatuor Diotima). It struck me, while I was progressively receiving the copies of Harry’s composition last year, that there was even a connection with the melancholy sound of the Brahm’s Quintet; after all, the opera is basically about a broken relationship. Consequently, there is a great deal of expressive sustained writing in the clarinet register. The part does not go unduly high – an occasional top B – but there is important dramatic fortissimo writing in that area.
Before Harry started writing I showed him possibilities of tremoloes in the basset register and at his request I played to him a number of "two notes at once". OK, we know that most of these split notes are not like two clarinets playing together but handled well by the composer and in a somewhat atmospheric situation, they can sound very effective. Before Harry put down the opera he wrote some Nocturnes and Aubades. These occur throughout the opera and while they are played there is virtually no action on stage. They also have a connection with the phases of the moon displayed above the room. (Io with her horns has been represented in the past as the Moon Goddess), These instrumental movements I am sure will be available from Boosey & Hawkes to be part played or in their entirety in a clarinet quintet concert. Some of these do not descend into the basset register.
At least the first 20 minutes (after the first Nocturne) is a dumb show: the man approaching the letterbox and the woman with her tea tray; her drawing the blinds down and falling into a disturbed sleep is graphically parallelled by the strings and clarinet, though its over dramatic style expresses the emotion of the two. The basset range sounds great just harmonically with the strings. Anyone who has played or heard Mozart’s Quintet and Concerto with its near original basset line can imagine the effect; so you see the extra emotional potential that is offered to Birtwistle. It was he who wrote the first modern piece for basset clarinet in 1968 (Linoi – and Four Interludes for a Tragedy). My instrument then, made by the legendary Ted Planas, had a detachable basset joint though it was quickly superceded by a properly mated section – the original bore compromise was tonally unsatisfactory. Those tremoloes which Harry uses on the appearance of Hermes, could only be fully achieved with a left hand Ab key beautifully fitted by Howarth’s clarinet maker, Pete Worrall. But what is most noticeable in this Score is the expressive writing in the clarinet register. There are also many sustained high Ebs from Niente. I found that the most reliable fingering was with the low Ab key open and with the next finger down (which was taught to me by my teacher Kell).
The critics have been unanimous in their praise and showed that they really understood and felt for the piece. If I may I’ll include a final section of Paul Driver’s (The Sunday Times) review since it describes an essential of the piece……."it is in the writing for the players, given FIT I to themselves, that the lycicism lies, for all the metrical complication of the idiom. Quatuor Diotima and Alan Hacker, who also conducted, brilliantly conveyed the opera’s sempiternal song, which finds in the ancient and modern worlds a common melancholy.
It’s hard to play for 95 minutes but a deep delight, great that a clarinet should be at the centre of an opera (Harry’s best to date).
I’ve bent the barrel of my basset clarinet, sawing the middle across obliquely, turning the sections 180 degrees, pinning and gluing and then covering the bore with Yachtman’s Cellulose. This stops kangaroo paw since you need a sling (and no thumb rest) so that your thumb is free to operate the basset keys.
During my preparation time and throughout the seven weeks of rehearsal with six and a half hours playing a day plus a trip on Eurostar through the tunnel to Paris, Montmartre to rehearse with the Quatuor Diotima I used only three Reeds Australia Vintage reeds, the last of which was still good as a fail safe in the first and second performances.
Alan Hacker.