The Noonday Witch, Op. 108
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
This late work is one of four tone poems that Antonín Dvořák based on spooky ballads by the Czech poet, Karel Jaromír Erben. With vivid brushstrokes, the music depicts a particularly unsettling tale, inviting the listener to imagine pictures to match the sounds. The challenge lies in locating how the story is progressing, and in judging whether this or that musical moment has special significance or not. We shall try to help with a summary; also by mentioning that the music lasts about 13 minutes, the narrative being spaced evenly within that span. Even thus armed, the listener might struggle with detail. However assiduously a composer strives to tell a story in music, in the absence of words or visual images, it may turn out that the result is appreciated and absorbed more as a succession of moods than of specific events.
We begin with a scene of a devoted mother and her young son, his father having left for work in the fields. Four jarring notes on the oboe, taken up by other woodwind, represent the small boy’s whining and weeping as he becomes restless. His mother tells him that if he continues to behave in this trying manner, the ‘Noonday Witch’ will come to get him. The Noonday Witch is similar to any other child-eating witch other than she elects to work by day rather than by night. Of course, the boy is fretful again, the mother threatens again and then, to the astonishment and terror of both, the witch appears for real. The mother cowers in a corner, shielding her son, while the witch demands that the boy be surrendered for culinary purposes. She performs a wild dance, as witches are inclined to do, then slithers away when the clock strikes twelve: twelve, mid-day of course, not midnight. (The dozen chimes provide a useful landmark for the listener.) The mother has fainted with her son held tight. The father, who discovers the tragic scene on his return home for lunch, revives his wife but she, in her dread, has smothered the little boy to death.
Whether or not one follows the detail of this gruesome drama, the fertility of Dvořák’s imagination and his skill in orchestration arouse admiration. The tone poem ranges into some daring harmonic regions, and underlying the whole piece is a discernible ‘Czechness’, a hint of folk music, and some echoes of the composer’s later symphonies. Dvořák’s programmatic music failed to gain broad public acceptance, as Richard Strauss was managing to do with his tone poems, maybe because he featured particularly unappealing stories, described as ‘horrible’ by Eduard Hanslick, a contemporary critic. Indeed, having absorbed the grim essence of the ballad outlined above, we might prefer to enjoy the freshness and invention in the music, and let the narrative take a back seat.
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
This late work is one of four tone poems that Antonín Dvořák based on spooky ballads by the Czech poet, Karel Jaromír Erben. With vivid brushstrokes, the music depicts a particularly unsettling tale, inviting the listener to imagine pictures to match the sounds. The challenge lies in locating how the story is progressing, and in judging whether this or that musical moment has special significance or not. We shall try to help with a summary; also by mentioning that the music lasts about 13 minutes, the narrative being spaced evenly within that span. Even thus armed, the listener might struggle with detail. However assiduously a composer strives to tell a story in music, in the absence of words or visual images, it may turn out that the result is appreciated and absorbed more as a succession of moods than of specific events.
We begin with a scene of a devoted mother and her young son, his father having left for work in the fields. Four jarring notes on the oboe, taken up by other woodwind, represent the small boy’s whining and weeping as he becomes restless. His mother tells him that if he continues to behave in this trying manner, the ‘Noonday Witch’ will come to get him. The Noonday Witch is similar to any other child-eating witch other than she elects to work by day rather than by night. Of course, the boy is fretful again, the mother threatens again and then, to the astonishment and terror of both, the witch appears for real. The mother cowers in a corner, shielding her son, while the witch demands that the boy be surrendered for culinary purposes. She performs a wild dance, as witches are inclined to do, then slithers away when the clock strikes twelve: twelve, mid-day of course, not midnight. (The dozen chimes provide a useful landmark for the listener.) The mother has fainted with her son held tight. The father, who discovers the tragic scene on his return home for lunch, revives his wife but she, in her dread, has smothered the little boy to death.
Whether or not one follows the detail of this gruesome drama, the fertility of Dvořák’s imagination and his skill in orchestration arouse admiration. The tone poem ranges into some daring harmonic regions, and underlying the whole piece is a discernible ‘Czechness’, a hint of folk music, and some echoes of the composer’s later symphonies. Dvořák’s programmatic music failed to gain broad public acceptance, as Richard Strauss was managing to do with his tone poems, maybe because he featured particularly unappealing stories, described as ‘horrible’ by Eduard Hanslick, a contemporary critic. Indeed, having absorbed the grim essence of the ballad outlined above, we might prefer to enjoy the freshness and invention in the music, and let the narrative take a back seat.