We’re bearing down on Hallowe’en, the perfect time to get out your black frock coat and brood over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have music inspired by the verse of Edgar Allan Poe.
We’ll hear a “melo-declamation,” for narrator and orchestra, on “The Raven” by Arcady Dubensky (1890-1966), a violinist in the New York Philharmonic. The piece was given its world premiere at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in 1932, captured in an experimental recording by RCA Victor, on 35mm optical film, and issued on a special 78 rpm 2-record set, with the poem, together with monochrome engravings of Stokowski and Poe, etched into the shellac. Benjamin de Loache is the speaker.
Then we’ll have a symphonic poem inspired by Poe’s “Ulalume” by English composer Joseph Holbrooke (1878-1958). Holbrooke evidently adored Poe, as he wrote a number of pieces inspired by his writings, including “The Raven,” “The Bells” (which predated the work by Rachmaninoff), and “The Masque of the Red Death.” “Ulalume” was first performed in 1905. The composer thought it one of his finest pieces. Again, the source poem is a gloomy meditation on the loss of a loved one.
From a brand new compact disc, one of the inaugural recordings on the Affetto label, we’ll hear selections from the song cycle “Lenoriana” (which gives the album its name) by Benjamin C.S. Boyle (b. 1979). Boyle is on the faculty of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, as are the performers, baritone Elem Eley and pianist J.J. Penna. Of the seven songs, we’ll hear Boyle’s settings of “Annabel Lee,” “The Conqueror Worm,” and “To Helen.”
Finally, we’ll have an orchestral etude on “The Haunted Palace,” which Poe incorporated into his story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The French composer Florent Schmitt (1870-1958) knew the work from the translation by Stéphane Mallarmé. It tells of a king of olden times full of presentiments of impending doom to his palace and himself. The house and the royal family are destroyed, and remnants of the court may still be glimpsed as phantoms flickering in the windows and doors.
“The Haunted Palace” may be the first piece of music by a French composer to be inspired by Poe. It was completed in 1904, and first performed the following year.
I hope you’ll join me for “Edgar Allan Poems,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.