Cantata

After Drama and Meditation, there came another work that reflected Valentin Silvestrov’s search for “equality” or “consubstantiality”. “I have wished for this my whole life long – to write a piece that in a single style is able to reconcile the erstwhile opponents of ‘tonality’ and ‘atonality’ and hold them for a moment in balance.”

The composer is referring to the Cantata on Poems by Fyodor Tyutchev and Alexander Blok for soprano and chamber orchestra (1973), which was premiered in Kiev on 12 January 1975 with Lidia Stovbun as soloist and the Kiev Chamber Orchestra conducted by Igor Blazhkov. For this work, Silvestrov chose two remarkable poems, visions of night landscapes which he merged into a strange “nocturne”. Again we feel his sense of the “cosmic pastoral”, which is given a verbal substantiation in the Cantata.

Also characteristic is the “sound of the wind, which gradually turns into music” (here in the instructions for the flute part at the beginning of the piece). The texts are either quite prominent (recited like an Ode) or they conceal themselves in a purely instrumental texture (as in the third movement): the horns play the melody of the first poem, while in the coda the Blok poem is notated over the harp part and should be “spoken” in the meter of the text by striking the resonance body of the harp. This final “voice” reveals not only the sense of the words, but their inner music as well.

Tatjana Frumkis