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News
May 8, 2010 : Le Testament 1926 at Parco della Musica in Rome, Italy
Pier Paolo Pasolini interview with Pound
ABOUT OUR PUBLISHED TITLES:
Le Testament "Paroles de Villon" 1926 and 1933 Performance editions
Engraved full music scores in a first edition of 200
Introduction by R. Murray Schafer
The one-act 50-minute opera dramatizes the return of exiled poet François Villon to Paris in 1461 to write his ribald and enduring final will and testament.
Double volume
I. The editor's reconstruction of the 1926 Salle Pleyel Concert version of Le Testament. In 1926 Pound rented the Salle Pleyel in Paris to preview 9 numbers from his opera and a newly composed overture for a long horn he called the "cornet de dessus," to demonstrate his theory of Great Bass. Pound revised the rhythms from the 1923 score—fiercely difficult irrational meters edited by George Antheil for what is now considered to be the urtext of the opera—on a new, 5/8 basis and reduced the performing forces to tenor, bass-baritone, violin, harpsichord, 2 trombones, and kettle drums. Virgil Thomson was in the audience, "The music was not quite a musician's music, though it may well be the finest poet's music since Thomas Campion. . . .It bore family resemblances unmistakable to the Socrate of Satie; and its sound has remained in my memory" (Virgil Thomson).
II. Pound's 1933 final, complete version of the opera, recently discovered, was to provide a practical performing edition. The composer continued to revise the rhythms of the numbers, many on a 3/4 and 4/4 basis, though he retained the signature irrational meters of the opera's middle numbers, Heaulmière's aria, Or y penser, and Dame du ciel from earlier versions. Performing forces are for 9 or more singers, 10–12 instruments.
13 facsimile reproductions of Pound's holograph scores, staging instructions, libretto, background, editor's notes.
July 2010 News: Several discrepancies in the manuscript tradition have recently been resolved for the 1926 Version of Le Testamaent. Download a .pdf file of the corrected pages to the score by clicking here.
Pound's first opera is "a modernist triumph ..."[the poet's] claim to musical immortality" (Richard Taruskin, New York Times, 27 July 2003).
"The performances have a strange intensity, like a cross between Carmina Burana and Diamanda Galas. ...There's a passion in this music which is compelling" (Ivan Hewett, BBC Music Magazine, August 2003).
"This idiosyncratic body of work proves to be full of rare pleasures and well worth hearing" (Joshua Rosenblum, Opera News, August 2003).
Cavalcanti: A Perspective on the Music of Ezra Pound
Essay and full music score in a first edition of 200
The three-act one hour opera is a dramatization of the life of the Florentine poet Guido Cavalcanti (1250-1300), friend of Dante, through eleven of his canzone and ballate. Two additional numbers are settings of poems in Provençal by Sordello.
Double volume
Part I. A systematic analysis of Pound's music training, the application of his musico-poetic theories, methods of composition, and a music analysis of the opera; the genesis and sources of Pound's Great Bass theory.
Part II. The definitive performance edition of Pound's "Cavalcanti," drawn from the uncatalogued and dispersed music manuscripts in the Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library (Yale University). This is the full music score with piano reduction and stage instructions. All music is composed by Ezra Pound. Additional narrator's script, dialogue, and stage instructions are by Pound; editorial notes by Robert Hughes.
Complete Violin Works of Ezra Pound, 1923-1933
First edition of 300, commentary with music scores.
Robert Hughes, Editor
Part I. A literary and technical study of Ezra Pound's solo violin works, many of which were composed for the American specialist in new music, violinist Olga Rudge.
Part II. Thirteen engraved performance scores and seven facsimile reproductions of Pound's holograph scores. Among the eight original compositions is Sestina: Altaforte, the only instance of a musical setting of his own poetry. The volume also includes Pound's settings of poems by Froissart, Dante, and Cavalcanti as well as arrangements of 12th- and 15th-century vocal works for violin.
The Recovery of Ezra Pound's Third Opera: Collis O Heliconii
(settings of poems by Catullus and Sappho)
First edition of 200, commentary with music scores.
By Margaret Fisher
Part I. Analysis of Pound's musical treatment of his favored poems of antiquity: Catullus carmen LXI ("Collis O Heliconii") and Sappho, fragment 1 ("Poikilothron' athanat' Aphrodita").
Part II. The engraved performance edition for violin and voice includes excerpts from the 2 principal arias, 3 incidental numbers, a transcription of Pound's unfinished translation of carmen LXI and Pound's scenario for his dramatic setting of the Catullan poem.
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