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Michael Parker, composing In the Late Wind of Death in Milton, Ontario

Longer Programme Note In the Late Wind of Death is based on the first choral ode from the Antigone by the classical Greek playwright Sophocles. The complicated rhythms of the original Greek text have been incorporated into the musical score. The ode proclaims the majestic and might power of Man: Many are the wonders of the world, but none is more wonderful than man: he can cross the grey sea, driven by wintery winds, passing between swelling waters that churn around him. Earth, the most ancient of gods, imperishable, inexhaustible, is worked to mankind's use, the ploughs always turning year after year, tilling the soil with the offspring of horses. The race of light-hearted birds and the wild creatures living in the sea, all are captured in the coils of the woven nets of man, excellent in wit. By his arts he can conquer the untamed beast that ranges over the wild mountains. The horse with shaggy mane he tames with his yoke, and the untiring power of the mountain bull. Words also, and thought, as swift as the wind, he has taught himself for his own benefit, and the ability to govern cities. He has learned to shelter himself from the bitter frosts and stormy snows of winter. "From every wind he has made himself secure - from all but one: in the late wind of death, he cannot stand." (translated by Michael Parker. Final quotation from Fitts and Fitzgerald, The Antigone of Sophocles, copyright 1939, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc.) The work also uses a musical quote from Richard Strauss' opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow). At the end of the first act, a chorus of Watchmen sing of the healing power of love: You husbands and wives, who lie in one another's loving arms, you are the bridge across the gulf over which the dead come back to life! Hallowed be your work of love! Although the title suggests a rather morbid work, the positive elements from the two sources help create an encouraging and reassuring reflection on Death. The work is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, who died in November, 1987, as I was beginning work on the piece. Of the many obstacles in her life, she, like Sophocles' Everyman, was able to conquer all but one. In the Late Wind of Death was commissioned by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony through a grant from the Ontario Arts Council and is dedicated to Raffi Armenian, Barry Cole and the members of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

Shorter Programme Note In the Late Wind of Death is based on the first choral ode from the Antigone by the classical Greek playwright Sophocles. The complicated rhythms of the original Greek text have been incorporated into the musical score. The ode proclaims the majestic and mighty power of Man, who can conquer every obstacle. He can tame the sea, till the earth, create thought and build cities. Only against death can he find no defence: "in the late wind of death, he cannot stand." The work also uses a musical quote from Richard Strauss' opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow). At the end of the first act, a chorus of Watchmen sing of the healing power of love: You husbands and wives, who lie in one another's loving arms, you are the bridge across the gulf over which the dead come back to life! Hallowed be your work of love! Although the title suggests a rather morbid work, the positive elements from the two sources help create an encouraging and reassuring reflection on Death. The work is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, who died in November, 1987, as I was beginning work on the piece. Of the many obstacles in her life, she, like Sophocles' Everyman, was able to conquer all but one. In the Late Wind of Death was commissioned by the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony through a grant from the Ontario Arts Council and is dedicated to Raffi Armenian, Barry Cole and the members of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

REVIEWS 1. The Premiere Performance, December 4, 1987, Kitchener, Ontario Kitchener-Waterloo Record, December 5, 1987: Dick Scott The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony's Masterpiece series is aptly named if Friday night's concert represents the sterling calibre of performance listeners can expect regularly. The KWS, under the direction of Raffi Armenian, appeared before a Centre in the Square audience of about 1,200 in works by Parker, Haydn and Sibelius. Michael Parker's composition, In the Late Wind of Death (Opus 35), is based on the first choral ode from Antigone by the classical Greek playwright Sophocles, which proclaims man's majestic and mighty power. Also incorporated into the work is a musical quote from Strauss' opera The Woman without a Shadow. According to Parker - who attended the concert - drawing on these two sources actually creates an encouraging and reassuring reflection of death. Superbly crafted, the composition opens with passages brimming with conflict and foreboding that gradually evolve into an impressive, almost grandiose, theme. Alive with colour and imagery, the well-received concert-opener made constant demands on all sections of the orchestra, especially percussion and timpani. A stunning viola passage, played by Dan Bush, brought the recently commissioned work to a memorable conclusion.   2. The Performance of February 8, 1991, Kitchener, Ontario Kitchener-Waterloo Record, February 9, 1991: Pauline Durichen Strauss (among a few subtly suggested others)...played a ghostly thematic hand inside parts of Toronto composer Michael Parker's (b. 1948) recent orchestral meditation, In the Late Wind of Death (Op. 35, 1986) which made a spectacular, far from morbid, opening for an evening that revolved around emphatic musical statements. While Strauss was only one of many discernible textural and technical influences (Parker's seminal idea grew from Sophocles' Antigone and from linguistic rhythms of the original Greek text), the awareness of such connections served to highlight deep creative synthesis rather than surface derivation. As nearly 1,200 listeners soon discovered, the striking and poetically structured result was uniquely Parker's. Particular highlights included arresting percussion effects, which kept section players literally sprinting from one position to another, richly tuneful brass choir segments, and a truly memorable extended viola solo that gave principal Dan Bush a well-deserved and eloquent last word.   3. The Performance of May 17, 1991, St. John's, Newfoundland The Sunday Express, May 26, 1991: Ian Ball "Recent work by local composer a highlight of latest NSO concert" The meat of the concert was provided by 17 minutes of that most dreaded of concert offerings, a piece of contemporary classical music! And by a local composer, no less. I think we can justifiably claim Michael Parker to be a Newfoundland artist; after all, most of his working life has been spent here and most of his significant compositions have been written and performed here. Mr. Parker may have felt a little out of place in the company of Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. Each received financial support, the former from the state, the latter from a private patron, which provided them with the independence necessary for a total devotion to their craft. Parker on the other hand has to hold down a job as Assistant (sic) Professor in Classics at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College while writing music in his spare time. Nonetheless he has produced a respectable corpus of over 30 works, ranging from pieces for solo guitar, through various chamber and choral ensembles, to full orchestra. It is a measure of his increasing stature that no less than 24 of these works are the results of commissions. We heard one of his more recent and large scale works. In the Late Wind of Death, written in June 1987 as an Ontario Arts Council commission for the Kitchener-Waterloo Orchestra. It is an impressive work and one that surely justifies the receipt of first prize in the 1988 Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition. The work, for full orchestra including harp and a greatly expanded percussion section, is based on the first choral ode from "Antigone" by Sophocles and is a proclamation of "the majestic and mighty power of Man." It is a pity that Mr. Parker's own translation of the ode was not included with the programme notes for not only would that have greatly enhanced the audience's appreciation of the work, but the translation in itself is very beautiful. The only other setting based on this ode which I know is that by Carl Orff (1949). As a Chorus of Theban Elders it opens the second act of his opera "Antigonae," based on Holderlein's translation of Sophocles. Interestingly Orff also uses massed percussion in his setting, the words being sung by a male chorus. Orff's rhythms follow closely those of the German translation while Parker tells us that the complicated rhythms of the original Greek text have been incorporated into his score. And while the compositional styles of the two composers are very different there are similarities of dramatic effect. Both use a contrast between pedal notes and percussive rhythms to establish the tension of the first words of the Ode: "Many are the wonders of the world, but none is more wonderful than man" (Parker). Thereafter Parker's music follows the text more literally. The section beginning with "The race of light hearted birds," for example, containing rapid instrumental figurations and some fine counter point in the strings. Parker ends with "From every wind he has made himself secure - from all but one: in the late wind of death, he cannot stand." The beauty of this translation is matched by the music itself, the orchestra dying to the voice of a lone viola which sings a poignant and exquisite farewell. In drawing these dramatic parallels I am not suggesting that Parker has been influenced by Orff's setting - I have no evidence that he has even heard it. Rather do I think the music to have more northern origins. The elemental grandeur of some of the themes is surely Sibelian. Swirling string and wind figures above a slowly moving, but most important, bass line, which often emerges triumphantly, is surely of Nielsen. And the love of complex orchestral sound, including that extraordinary moment of stillness in high strings with the harp picking its way through the stasis, together with abrupt changes of mood, could have come from a number of symphonies by Havergal Brian. That there should be several lovely viola solos merely reflects Parker's own proficiency on that instrument, though no doubt John Andrew Ravnan was appreciative of them. No composer, of course, is entirely free of influence. With repeated hearing of this, and other, works an individual voice may well emerge. At a first hearing one inevitably, if regrettably, searches for the familiar. What is clear is that Mr. Parker has a fine control of his instrumental forces and a capacity for sustained orchestral thought. I suspect that the apparent episodic nature of the piece, perhaps derived from too close an adherence to the moods of the text, will be less apparent on further acquaintances. A work such as this cannot be easy to play and learn. Perhaps it is to Mr. Parker's account that we should deposit the blame for the grossly under-rehearsed Sibelius and Tchaikovsky! I assume that most of the rehearsal time went to his piece. And why not! It is surely a prime function of a community orchestra to play the works of the local composers so that they may have the opportunity, all too rare as I am sure they would agree, of adjusting their inner ear and their sense of form. That music of the calibre of In the Late Wind of Death is being both written and played here in Newfoundland should be a source of pride all round