Program Note for The Pure Fury (1988)
for tenor and chamber orchestra (or large chamber ensemble)
The Pure Fury was completed in November of 1988,
and consists of two songs framing a central melodrama, or dramatic recitation
with musical accompaniment. The suggestion of arch-like form this arrangement
of the movements presents is further reinforced by the relationship between
the outer songs, in which harmonic, melodic and textural ideas presented
in Song are developed and completed by The Pure Fury.
The three movements are all related in that they share common poetic ideas
and images concerning love, death and nature. While it is tempting to offer
a lengthy analysis of these three Roethke poems and the reasons why I have
set them to music in this particular way, I will say simply that the gritty,
sardonic images he favors often exist in a state of tension with the emotional
undercurrents of the poems, and that my desire is to enhance this tension
by bringing these undercurrents to the fore in the music.