Golfam Khayam

Born: 1982

No one was more surprised about the birth of this piece than the composer herself. When Iranian-born composer and improviser Golfam Khayam saw a video of Barbara Hannigan participating in an event supporting Persian culture, she felt compelled to get in touch. Hannigan replied within two hours, and within months this new work was born.

Je ne suis pas une fable à conter (I am not a tale to be told) is based on a poem written in 1955 by celebrated Iranian poet, and family friend, Ahmad Shamlou, whose works Khayam describes as ‘beyond time and space’. Khayam grew up with Shamlou’s poems and sees this one as being ‘the narrator for so many silent voices seeking light through dark times’.

The piece is shaped for the particular – perhaps unique – talents of Hannigan, who both sings (in Farsi and French) and conducts. Elements of it – melodic shape, ornamentation, the use of non-Western scales and drones (long held notes) – are borrowed from Persian music, and the orchestral parts include patterns or phrases that the performers are free to play in an improvised way, creating what Khayam has likened to a ‘Persian carpet’ beneath the vocal lines. As Hannigan has said, no two performances are the same. She has also noted – perhaps reflecting Khayam’s view of the poem as empowering unheard voices – that the orchestral players, in their musical choices, can also choose not to play, ‘to let silence be your voice’.

Joseph Haydn

Born: 1732
Died: 1809

In 1761, at the age of 29, Joseph Haydn became Vice-Kapellmeister (effectively second in charge of music) at the court of the Esterházy family. He later rose to Kapellmeister and stayed in the family’s employment for nearly 30 years in all. The price he paid for his loyalty was isolation from musical trends elsewhere. On the flipside, as he famously said, he was ‘forced to become original’.

Most of Haydn’s 107 symphonies, especially at this time, were written for performances at court – high-class entertainment – so No 39 is unusual in being written in a minor key (rather than a more sunny major key). This symphony falls into the period of his so-called Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) period, referring to a style borrowed from the literary movement that highlighted more turbulent and passionate moods. One expert has described these symphonies as ‘longer, more passionate and more daring’ than what came before.

Until relatively recently, Haydn’s symphonies were overshadowed by those of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and their many successors into the Romantic period and beyond. Sir Simon Rattle, the LSO’s Conductor Emeritus, has gone as far as declaring that Haydn would be the one composer he couldn’t live without. And Barbara Hannigan has said of Haydn’s symphonies: ‘Once I started conducting the symphonies … I realised they’re like operas – so theatrical.’

Béla Bartók

Born: 1881
Died: 1945

Béla Bartók wrote three works for the stage and all three centre on a male–female relationship, in particular a lonely male in search of love. The Duke in the opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1911) is repressed, abusive and carries a dark secret. In the ballet The Wooden Prince (1914–17) the Prince eventually attracts the attention of the Princess.

The final stage-work, the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, returns to the darker nature of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle but, while the horrors there are psychological, here Bartók produced a score of raw immediacy – of violence, lust and a touch of the supernatural.

The scenario, by the Hungarian dramatist Menyhért Lengyel, concerns a girl forced into luring men into a shabby upstairs room, for them to be beaten and robbed by a gang of three pimps. The first victim is a dirty old man with no money: he is thrown out. The second is a young man, shy and more likeable, but equally penniless: he is also ejected. The Girl is under increasing pressure to pull in some cash, and her third customer is an imposing Mandarin.

From the start, his presence is ominous. At first he ignores the girl’s dancing, but he is soon seized by frenzied desire, and chases her around the room. The thugs take the Mandarin’s valuables and decide to finish him off. First they try to suffocate him but that fails; next they stab him but still he refuses to die. Then they hang him by his own pigtail but still he lives. It is only when the girl offers a genuine gesture of affection that the Mandarin finally expires.

The Miraculous Mandarin opens with a cacophonous prelude (Bartók’s intended ‘horrible pandemonium, din, racket and hooting’): a breathless thrill-ride depicting city bustle, with trombone and trumpet sounding a terrifying fanfare. Key pillars in the action are the three clarinet solos, which occur as the girl stands in the window to attract the next victim, and the graphic short tumbling figures as the thugs throw the first two men down the stairs. Sneering boozy trombones point to the first (old) man’s lewdness (and perhaps alcohol consumption), while a naive oboe solo reflects the younger man’s arrival.

The entrance of the Mandarin – terrifying trombones, joined by cymbal clashes – forms a climax. The girl’s dance for the Mandarin ends in a weird waltz, after which comes the frenzied chase. We are spared the three murder attempts, as this is where the action of the suite ends.

Given the debased subject matter, it’s no surprise that The Miraculous Mandarin was banned by the mayor of Cologne after its premiere, on 27 November 1926. One newspaper reported ‘catcalls, whistling, stamping and booing which went on for several minutes’. With its barbaric ostinatos (repeated rhythmic patterns), no doubt inspired by Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet The Rite of Spring, and its complex, other-worldly harmonies, in this work Bartók gave full expression to the scenario, which its writer aptly characterised as a ‘grotesque pantomime’.