Did you know that Ezra Pound wrote an opera?
As a blow against Debussy and the pernicious influence of “Pelleas,” Pound contrived to write music of such rhythmic complexity as to leave “Le sacre du printemps” in the shade. Characteristically, the freewheeling poet described his method as “improving a system by refraining from obedience to all its present ‘laws.’” In other words, he was a proud contrarian.
In 1919, when Pound was 34 years-old, he conceived “Le Testament de Villon,” an operatic setting of François Villon’s poem of 1461. An ardent champion of Trenton’s own George Antheil from the composer’s early days in Paris, Pound enlisted Antheil’s help in developing a system of micro-rhythms the better to express the vitality of Villon’s Old French. The two worked at it in 1923. In 1924, Pound wrote a book titled “Antheil and the Treatise of Harmony,” a piece of hagiography so extravagant that it succeeded even in embarrassing the composer.
Preview performances in 1924 and 1926 brought criticism from the performers of the utter impracticality of the score. There are no rests or breath marks. There are crushing dissonances. The work’s demands call for scratches, hiccoughs, and the use of human bones in the percussion part.
Virgil Thomson praised the piece. “The music was not quite musician’s music,” he wrote, “though it may well be the finest poet’s music since Thomas Campion.” Pound’s colleague, the poet William Carlos Williams, described him thus: “…He knows nothing of music, being tone-deaf. That’s what makes him a musician.”
Excerpts from Pound’s “Le Testament de Villon” will receive a rare performance at the London Contemporary Music Festival on December 15. It is being advertised as the work’s UK premiere in its original version for two tins and a washboard. The first complete performance, in Antheil’s arrangement for small orchestra, was given over BBC radio in 1933.
Subsequently, Pound began work on two other operas. Neither was ever completed.
More about the upcoming performance here:
https://billetto.co.uk/lcmf-2015-15-december
Anyone remember this out-of-print Philips LP?
