A Twitcher's Delight

According to the RSPB, two-thirds of the British public found solace in birdwatching during lockdown, writes Natasha Loges. Might this signal the birth of a new generation of twitchers?

If so, they will be delighted by tonight’s affectionate and thought-provoking celebration of birds – and a few other creatures. The programme combines French and English song from the 20th into the 21st century. A composer himself, baritone Roderick Williams feels at home with this music. In his recitals, he always tries to strike a balance between the familiar and the new, the consoling and the challenging, and tonight’s programme is no exception.

We begin with Gabriel Fauré’s late cycle Mirages, four songs evoking natural themes. Fauré set these poems by Renée Bonnière, the Baronne Antoine de Brimont, in the aftermath of World War I. An idealisation of the soul as a swan launches our evening, followed by watery reflections, then a depiction of a nocturnal garden, and finally, a lilting, erotically tinged dance. The 74-year-old Fauré gave the first performance with his protégée Madeleine Grey, although he was, by then, completely deaf. The songs are a distillation of his spare, effortless late style.

Events take a darker turn with Judith Weir’s cycle The Voice of Desire, composed for mezzo-soprano Alice Coote in 2003. Robert Bridges’ poem ‘The Voice of Desire’ reveals the hidden undertones of the nightingales’ song. Similarly, in ‘White Eggs in the Bush’, a translation from Hunter Poems of the Yoruba, the cuckoo and coucal foretell war and bloodshed in their song. ‘Written on Terrestrial Things’, a setting of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’, offers respite as the bird’s cheery song emerges from the bleak winter. In ‘Sweet Little Red Feet’, (John Keats’s ‘Song’), the poet wonders why his beloved dove has died. As Weir puts it, ‘the nightingale lives in a darker emotional world than we can imagine; the blue cuckoo knows that the wars we blunder into will bring destruction; the thrush sings joyfully whilst we are mentally blank; the dove has died rather than face emotional suffocation from its adoring owner.’

Two cycles are at the heart of the rest of the programme: Ravel’s Histoires naturelles and Ryan Wigglesworth’s new cycle Vignettes de Jules Renard. Histoires naturelles is a 1906 cycle of settings of Jules Renard. We coolly observe a vain peacock, an obsessively tidy cricket, a swan baffled by his own reflection, a kingfisher (sung from the perspective of an admiring fisherman), and a belligerent guinea-fowl. Ravel dedicated ‘The Swan’ to the colourful saloniste Misia Godebska. Early listeners were outraged by the evocation of the popular style of the café concert in this music, but Roderick Williams loves the composer’s ‘dry, droll, farmyard language’.

The seed for Wigglesworth’s Vignettes de Jules Renard was planted when Williams encountered his dazzling vocal writing in the 2017 opera The Winter's Tale. The cycle builds on the Renard texts Ravel set and shares the earlier composer’s pictorial approach. We take a detailed look at the humble chicken as she pecks, drinks and eats. The squat, sedate Toad is dismissed as ugly, but instantly returns the insult. The grasshopper is the focus of the final song; we admire his fearlessness and impressive leaps but recall his fragility when he detaches a leg whilst escaping.

Williams’s lifelong relationship with English song is showcased in the second half of this evening’s programme. He is deeply committed to communicating with English-speaking audiences. ‘It is my intention to be understood, in real time, as I sing’. Musical appeal also matters; Williams champions the British songwriters of the twentieth century, many of whom wrote beautiful melodies which Williams finds ‘great to sing and relax into.’

A cuckoo’s song threads through Gurney’s ebullient ‘Spring’, from his Five Elizabethan Songs. In ‘Walking Song’, the poet strides through London, but longs to be a rook flying over his Gloucestershire village; he settles for loud cawing! Irish composer Ina Boyle follows with her lavish ‘The Joy of Earth’ before Moeran’s gently melancholy 'When smoke stood up from Ludlow', recounting an exchange with a wise blackbird. Britten’s ‘Proud Songsters’ muses on the miracle of new life, as the poet contemplates the young birds who did not exist a year ago. It contrasts with the beautiful Welsh folk-song arrangement, ‘The Ash Grove’, a tale of grief accompanied by the fluting blackbird. But in Finzi’s melancholy ‘Before and After Summer’, the bird is unnamed – and mute. We close with Adrian Williams's Red Kite Flying; this setting of the composer’s own text captures the quicksilver energy of the kite as it soars above earthly suffering.

A Twitcher’s Delight seeks to draw us back into a close relationship with nature, offering loving observations of the details and quirks of the creatures with whom we share the world.

Programme and performers

Gabriel Fauré Mirages

1. Cygne sur l'eau (Swan on the water)

2. Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections on the water)

3. Jardin nocturne (Nocturnal garden)

4. Danseuse (Dancing girl)

Judith Weir The Voice of Desire

1. The Voice of Desire

2. White Eggs in the Bush

3. Written on Terrestrial Things

4. Sweet Little Red Feet

Maurice Ravel Histoire Naturelles

1. Le paon (The peacock)

2. Le grillon (The cricket)

3. Le cygne (The swan)

4. Le martin-pêcheur (The kingfisher)

5. La pintade (The guineafowl)

Ryan Wigglesworth Vignettes de Jules Renard (world premiere)

1. La Poule (The Hen)

2. Le Crapaud (The Toad)

3. La Sauterelle (The Grasshopper)

Ivor Gurney 'Spring' from Five Elizabethan Songs

Ivor Gurney Walking Song

Ina Boyle The Joy of Earth

EJ Moeran No 1 'When smoke stood up from Ludlow' from Ludlow Town

Benjamin Britten 'Proud Songsters' from Winter Words

Welsh Traditional The Ash Grove (arr Benjamin Britten)

Gerald Finzi 2. 'Before and After Summer' from Before and After Summer

Adrian Williams Red Kite Flying

Performers

Roderick Williams baritone

Andrew West piano

Part one

Ma pensée est un cygne harmonieux et sage
qui glisse lentement aux rivages d'ennui
sur les ondes sans fond du rêve, du mirage,
de l'echo, du brouillard, de l'ombre, de la nuit.

Il glisse, roi hautain fendant un libre espace,
poursuit un reflet vain, précieux et changeant,
et les roseaux nombreux s'inclinent quand il passe,
sombre et muet, au seuil d'une lune d'argent;

et des blancs nenuphars chaque corolle ronde
tour-à-tour a fleuri de désir et d'espoir...
Mais plus avant toujours, sur la brume et sur l'onde,
vers l'inconnu fuyant, glisse le cygne noir.

Or j'ai dit, <Renoncez, beau cygne chimérique,
à ce voyage lent vers de troubles destins;
nul miracle chinois, nul étrange Amérique
ne vous acceuilleront en des havres certains;

les golfes embaumés, les îles immortelles
ont pour vous, cygne noir, des récifs périlleux;
demeurez sur les lacs où se mirent, fidèles,
ces nuages, ces fleurs, ces astres, et ces yeux.>

My thought is a harmonious and wise swan
which glides slowly to the shores of boredom
upon the bottomless waters of dreams, mirages,
of echoes, fogs, shadows, of the night.

It glides, haughty king cleaving a free space,
chases a vain, precious and changing reflection,
and the plentiful reeds bow when it passes by,
sombre and silent, at the threshold of a silver moon;

and one by one each round corolla of the white
water lilies has flowered with desire and hope...
But always in front of all, upon the mist and upon the water,
fleeing towards the unknown, glides the black swan.

And then I said, ‘Handsome illusory swan, renounce,
this slow journey towards troubled destinies;
no Chinese miracle, no strange America
will welcome you in safe havens;

the fragrant gulfs, the immortal isles
hold for you, black swan, perilous reefs;
remain on the lakes in which, ever faithful,
these clouds, these flowers, these stars, and these eyes are reflected.’

Translation © Christopher Goldsack via The Mélodie Treasury

Étendue au seuil du bassin,
dans l'eau plus froide que le sein
des vierges sages,
j'ai reflété mon vague ennui,
mes yeux profonds couleur de nuit
et mon visage.

Et dans ce miroir incertain
j'ai vu de merveilleux matins...
J'ai vu des choses
pâles comme des souvenirs
sur l'eau que ne saurait ternir
nul vent morose.

Alors _ au fond du Passé bleu _
mon corps mince n'était qu'un peu
d'ombre mouvante,
sous les lauriers et les cyprès
j'amais la brise au souffle frais
qui nous évente...

J'amais vos caresses de sœur,
vos nuances, votre douceur,
aube opportune;
et votre pas souple et rythmé,
nymphes au rire parfumé,
au teint de lune;

et le galop des aegypans,
et la fontaine qui s'épand
en larmes fades...
Par les bois secrets et divins
e'écoutais frissonner sans fin
l'hamadryade.

O cher Passé mystérieux
qui vous reflétez dans mes yeux
comme un nuage,
il me serait plaisant et doux,
Passé, d'essayer avec vous
le long voyage!...

Si je glisse, les eaux feront
un rond fluide... un autre rond,
un autre à peine...
Et puis le miroir enchanté
reprendra sa limpidité
froide et sereine.

Stretched along the threshold of the pool,
in the water colder than the breast
of untarnished virgins
I reflected my vague boredom,
my profound eyes, colour of the night
and my face.

And in this uncertain mirror
I saw wondrous mornings...
I saw pale
things like memories
on the water which could not tarnish
any morose wind.

Then at the bottom of the blue past,
my slim body was nothing but a bit
of moving shadow,
beneath the laurels and the cypresses
I liked the breeze with the fresh breath
which lays us open...

I liked your sisterly caresses
your inflections, your gentleness,
opportune dawn;
and your supple and rhythmical step,
nymphs with perfumed smiles,
with the colour of the moon;

and the gallop of the aegypans,
and the fountain which spreads
in bland tears...
Through the secret and divine woods
I listened to the hamadryade
quivering endlessly.

O dear mysterious Past
which you reflect in my eyes
like a cloud,
it would be pleasant and sweet,
past, to attempt
the long journey with you!...

If I glide, the waters will form
a fluid sphere... another sphere,
hardly another...
And then the enchanted mirror
will regain its cold
and serene limpidity.

Il va sûrement se marier aujourd’hui.
Ce devait être pour hier. En habit de gala, il était prêt.
Il n’attendait que sa fiancée. Elle n’est pas venue.
Elle ne peut tarder.
Glorieux, il se promène avec une allure de prince indien et porte sur lui les riches présents d’usage.
L’amour avive l’éclat de ses couleurs et son aigrette tremble comme une lyre.
La finacée n’arrive pas.
Il monte au haut du toit et regarde du côté du soleil.
Il jette son cri diabolique:
Léon! Léon!
C’est ainsi qu’il appelle sa fiancée. Il ne voit rien venir et personne ne répond.
Les volailles habituées ne lèvent même point la tête. Elles sont lasses de l’admirer.
Il redescend dans la cour, si sûr d’être beau qu’il est incapable de rancune.
Son mariage sera pour demain.
Et, ne sachant que faire du reste de la journée, il se dirige vers le perron.
Il gravit les marches, comme des marches de temple, d’un pas officiel.
Il relève sa robe à queue toute lourde des yeux qui n’ont pu se détacher d’elle.
Il répète encore une fois la cérémonie.

He will surely get married today.
It was to have been yesterday. In full regalia, he was ready.
It was only his bride he was waiting for. She has not come.
She cannot be long.
Proudly he walks with the air of an Indian prince, bearing about his person the customary lavish gifts.
Love burnishes the brilliance of his colours, and his crest quivers like a lyre.
His bride does not appear.
He ascends to the top of the roof and looks towards the sun.
He utters his devilish cry:
Léon! Léon!
It is thus that he summons his bride. He can see nothing drawing near, and no one replies.
The fowls are used to this and do not even raise their heads. They are tired of admiring him.
He descends once more to the yard, so sure of his beauty that he is incapable of resentment.
His marriage will take place tomorrow.
And, not knowing what to do for the rest of the day, he heads for the flight of steps.
He ascends them, as though they were the steps of a temple, with a formal tread.
He lifts his train, heavy with eyes that have been unable to detach themselves.
Once more he repeats the ceremony.

Translations © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder, published by Faber, provided courtesy of Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)

Il glisse sur le bassin, comme un traîneau blanc, de nuage en nuage.
Car il n’a faim que des nuages floconneux qu’il voit naître, bouger, et se perdre dansl’eau.
C’est l’un d’eux qu’il désire. Il le vise du bec, et il plonge tout à coup son col vêtu de neige.
Puis, tel un bras de femme sort d’une manche, il le retire.
Il n’a rien.
Il regarde: les nuages effarouchés ont disparu.
Il ne reste qu’un instant désabusé, car les nuages tardent peu à revenir, et, là-bas, où meurent les ondulations de l’eau, en voici un qui se reforme.
Doucement, sur son léger coussin de plumes, le cygne rame et s’approche…
Il s’épuise à pêcher de vains reflets, et peut-être qu’il mourra, victime de cette illusion, avant d’attraper un seul morceau de nuage.
Mais qu’est-ce que je dis?
Chaque fois qu’il plonge, il fouille du bec la vase nourrissante et ramène en ver.
Il engraisse comme une oie.

He glides on the pond like a white sled, from cloud to cloud.
For he is hungry only for the fleecy clouds that he sees forming, moving, dissolving in the water.
It is one of these that he wants. He takes aim with his beak and suddenly immerses his snow-clad neck.
Then, like a woman’s arm emerging from a sleeve, he draws it back up.
He has caught nothing.
He looks about: the startled clouds have vanished.
Only for a second is he disappointed, for the clouds are not slow to return, and, over there, where the ripples fade, there is one reappearing.
Gently, on his soft cushion of down, the swan paddles and approaches…
He exhausts himself fishing for empty reflections, and perhaps he will die, a victim of that illusion, before catching a single shred of cloud.
But what am I saying?
Each time he dives, he burrows with his beak in the nourishing mud and brings up a worm.
He’s getting as fat as a goose.

Translations © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder, published by Faber, provided courtesy of Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)

C’est la bossue de ma cour. Elle ne rêve que plaies à cause de sa bosse.
Les poules ne lui disent rien: brusquement, elle se précipite et les harcèle.
Puis elle baisse sa tête, penche le corps, et, de toute la vitesse de ses pattes maigres, elle court frapper, de son bec dur, juste au centre de la roue d’une dinde.
Cette poseuse l’agaçait.
Ainsi, la tête bleuie, ses barbillons à vif, cocardière, elle rage du matine au soir.
Elle se bat sans motif, peut-être parce qu’elle s’imagine toujours qu’on se moque de sa taille, de son crâne chauve et de sa queue basse.
Et elle ne cesse de jeter un cri discordant qui perce l’air comme une pointe.
Parfois elle quitte la cour et disparaît. Elle laisse aux volailles pacifiques un moment de répit.
Mais elle revient plus turbulente et plus criarde. Et, frénétique, elle se vautre par terre.
Qu’a-t-elle donc?
La sournoise fait une farce.
Elle est allée pondre son œuf à la campagne.
Je peux le chercher si ça m’amuse.
Elle se roule dans la poussière, comme une bossue.

She is the hunchback of my barnyard. She dreams only of wounding, because of her hump.
The hens say nothing to her: suddenly, she swoops and harries them.
Then she lowers her head, leans forward, and, with all the speed of her skinny legs, runs and strikes with her hard beak at the very centre of a turkey’s tail.
This poseuse was provoking her.
Thus, with her bluish head and raw wattles, pugnaciously she rages from morn to night.
She fights for no reason, perhaps because she always thinks they are making fun of her figure, of her bald head and drooping tail.
And she never stops screaming her discordant cry, which pierces the air like a needle.
Sometimes she leaves the yard and vanishes. She gives the peace-loving poultry a moment’s respite.
But she returns more rowdy and shrill. And in a frenzy she wallows in the earth.
Whatever’s wrong with her?
The cunning creature is playing a trick.
She went to lay her egg in the open country.
I can look for it if I like.
And she rolls in the dust, like a hunchback.

Translations © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder, published by Faber, provided courtesy of Oxford Lieder (www.oxfordlieder.co.uk)

Part two

Pattes jointes, elle saute du poulailler, dès qu’on lui ouvre la porte.
C’est une poule commune, modestement parée et qui ne pond jamais d’œufs d’or.
Éblouie de lumière, elle fait quelques pas, indécise, dans la cour.
Elle voit d’abord le tas de cendres où, chaque matin, elle a coutume de s’ébattre.
Elle s’y roule, s’y trempe, et, d’une vive agitation d’ailes, les plumes gonflées, elle secoue ses puces de la nuit.
Puis elle va boire au plat creux que la dernière averse a rempli.
Elle ne boit que de l’eau.
Elle boit par petits coups et dresse le col, en équilibre sur le bord
du plat.
Ensuite elle cherche sa nourriture éparse.
Les fines herbes sont à elle, et les insectes et les graines perdues.
Elle pique, elle pique, infatigable.
De temps en temps, elle s’arrête.
Droit sous son bonnet phrygien, l’œil vif, le jabot avantageux, elle écoute de l’une et de l’autre oreille.
Et, sûre qu’il n’y a rien de neuf, elle se remet en quête.
Elle lève haut ses pattes raides, comme ceux qui ont la goutte. Elle écarte les doigts et les pose avec précaution, sans bruit.
On dirait qu’elle marche pieds nus.

Feet together, she jumps down from the coop, as soon as the door is opened.
A common hen, modestly attired, she has never laid a golden
egg.
Blinded by the light, she takes a few hesitant steps in the barnyard.
First of all she sees the heap of ashes, where each morning
she frolics.
She rolls in it, wallows in it, and, with a swift flutter of wings, she puffs up her feathers and shakes off the night’s fleas.
Then she goes and drinks from the shallow dish the shower has just filled.
Water is all she ever drinks.
She drinks in little sips, straightening her neck and balancing on the edge of the dish.
Then she hunts around for her scattered food.
Hers are the delicate herbs, the insects and the stray seeds.
Tirelessly, she pecks and pecks.
Occasionally, she stops.
Upright beneath her Phrygian cap, bright-eyed, jabot displayed to advantage, she listens, first with one ear, then the other.
And, convinced nothing has happened, she renews her search.
She raises her stiff feet high in the air, as though she had gout. She spreads her toes and sets them down carefully, without a sound.
As if she were walking barefoot.

Translations © Richard Stokes from the complete Histoires Naturelles by Jules Renard in a parallel text edition, published by Alma Classics (2017)

Né d’une pierre, il vit sous une pierre et s’y creusera un tombeau.
Je le visite fréquemment, et chaque fois que je lève sa pierre, j’ai peur de le retrouver et peur qu’il n’y soit plus.
Il y est.
Caché dans ce gîte sec, propre, étroit, bien à lui, il l’occupe pleinement, gonflé comme une bourse d’avare.
Qu’une pluie le fasse sortir, il vient au-devant de moi. Quelques sauts lourds, et il me regarde de ses yeux rougis.
Si le monde injuste le traite en lépreux, je ne crains pas de m’accroupir près de lui et d’approcher du sien mon visage d’homme.
Puis je dompterai un reste de dégoût, et je te caresserai de ma main,
crapaud !
On en avale dans la vie qui font plus mal au cœur.
Pourtant, hier, j’ai manqué de tact. Il fermentait et suintait, toutes ses verrues crevées.
« Mon pauvre ami, lui dis-je, je ne veux pas te faire de peine, mais, Dieu ! que tu es laid ! »
Il ouvrit sa bouche puérile et sans dents, à l’haleine chaude, et me répondit avec un léger accent anglais :
« Et toi ? »

Born of a stone, he lives beneath a stone and will dig his grave there.
I visit him frequently, and each time I lift his stone I’m afraid of finding him and afraid he’ll no longer be there.
He is.
Hidden in this refuge that is dry, clean, confined, all his own, he occupies it fully, bloated like a miser’s purse.
If a downpour drives him out, he comes right up to me. After a few heavy jumps he rests on his haunches and looks at me with reddened eyes.
If an unjust world treats him like a leper, I’m not afraid of crouching close and lowering my human face to his.
I shall then overcome what’s left of my revulsion and caress you, toad, with my hand!
Some things in life are more sickening.
Even so, yesterday I showed a lack of tact. He was fermenting and seeping from all his fissured warts.
‘My poor friend,’ I said to him, ‘I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, but my God you’re ugly!’
He opened his childish toothless mouth with its warm breath, and replied with a faintly English accent:
‘And you’re not?’

Translations © Richard Stokes from the complete Histoires Naturelles by Jules Renard in a parallel text edition, published by Alma Classics (2017)

Serait-ce le gendarme des insectes ?
Tout le jour, elle saute et s’acharne aux trousses d’invisibles braconiers qu’elle n’attrape jamais.
Les plus hautes herbes ne l’arrêtent pas.
Rien ne lui fait peur, car elle a des bottes de sept lieues, un cou de taureau, le front génial, le ventre d’une carène, des ailes en celluloïd, des cornes diaboliques et un grand sabre au derrière.
Comme on ne peut avoir les vertus d’un gendarme sans les vices, il faut bien le dire, la sauterelle chique.
Si je mens, poursuis-la de tes doigts, joue avec elle à quatre coins, et quand tu l’auras saisie, entre deux bonds, sur une feuille de luzerne, observe sa bouche : par ses terribles mandibules, elle sécrète une mousse noire comme du jus de tabac.
Mais déjà tu ne la tiens plus. Sa rage de sauter la reprend. Le monste vert t’échappe d’un brusque effort et, fragile, démontable, te laisse une petite cuisse dans la main.

Could he be the gendarme among insects?
All day long he leaps about in furious pursuit of invisible poachers he
never catches.
The tallest grasses fail to stop him.
Nothing frightens him, for he has seven-league boots, a bull-neck, the brow of a genius, the belly of a ship’s hull, celluloid wings, devil’s horns and a huge sabre on his backside.
Since one cannot have the virtues of a gendarme without his vices, the grasshopper, it has to be admitted, chews tobacco.
If you think I’m lying, follow him with your fingers, play puss-in-the-corner with him, and when you catch him, between leaps, on a leaf of lucerne grass, observe his mouth: he secretes through his mandibles a black foam that looks like tobacco juice.
But you can’t contain him any longer. His mania for leaping takes hold of him again. With a sudden effort the green monster escapes from your grasp and, fragile, easily dismantled, leaves a tiny thigh in your hand.

Translations © Richard Stokes from the complete Histoires Naturelles by Jules Renard in a parallel text edition, published by Alma Classics (2017)

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