When I saw this photograph, the story formed instantly in my mind. Unlike other story-image pairs, this one was starkly literal: the tree did look to me like an animal balked and startled onto its hind legs.
Perhaps because it was missing the allegory and metaphor of the other months’ stories, these elements showed up in the music I wrote last week.
When I looked at the image again (it’s a personal favorite amongst the twelve, one I feel that wants to be looked at over and over), I fancifully saw it as an opera singer on stage, with arms outstretched and head thrown back in mid-aria. The singer is playing the character of an anthropomorphic animal. (such as in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen.)
So I wrote an aria. Actually a recitative-arioso and aria (all in under a minute…). Musically, I express the ‘surprise’ with the unexpected change of harmony as early as the 3rd chord. It’s composed in a lush, turn of the 20th century style – an epoch of high opera. I wonder what the animal is singing about. Maybe it’s about being turned into a tree. It happened to Daphne – while she was running from the god Apollo, she appealed to her magical father for help. Daphne chose to be transformed into a laurel tree rather than surrender to Apollo. In 1938 Richard Strauss composed an opera on this story, though it remains sadly one of his lesser-known works.
Strauss must have been in my ear. This March music is far more harmonically advanced than the January and February music, so it will be curious what reactions I get.
An admission: I had to score it for 2 harps instead of one. The harp is not a chromatic instrument and simply cannot play these harmonies at the pace required for the piece. Given time, I can write out a single-harp version but this involves some ingenious pedaling and judiciously-masked note-omissions – which will be a satisfying job for a rainy afternoon soon.
