Devilled Swan

Devilled Swan was commissioned by John Beckwith, a former professor of mine at the University of Toronto, on the event of his receipt of the Toronto Arts Award for music in 1994 from the Arts Foundation of Greater Toronto.  It was premiered by Arraymusic on June 27, 1995.

Devilled Swan is based on the late 18th-century hymn tune China, by Timothy Swan, a highly esteemed American hymnodist who also had a reputation for hard living.  China was immensely popular throughout most of the 19th century, especially at funerals, but it virtually disappeared from use thereafter.  It is in recognition of Professor Beckwith's devotion to hymn scholarship that I use it, or rather abuse it.  Swan's quirky, leaping melody is progressively squashed flatter and flatter, and the chorale’s inner voices become unrecognizably chromatic, while the rhythmically lively sections of the opening collapse into stasis.  It is a kind of musical vivisection of the hymn.  In part, this is a reaction against the text, which tells us not to mourn the dead, but rather to envy their extraterrestrial travels.  It’s also a cheeky salute to my erstwhile teacher, using the same musical materials--octaves, chromatic scales, monotonously regular durations--which John urged us students to handle only with the utmost care.

Toronto composer James Rolfe (b. Ottawa, 1961) writes for chamber ensemble, orchestra, and choir. He has been commissioned and performed by ensembles in Canada, the USA, Europe, and New Zealand. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, the K. M. Hunter Music Award in 2003, the 2005 Louis Applebaum Composers Award, and the 2006 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for raW.

Mr. Rolfe is also known as of Canada’s leading opera composers. His opera Beatrice Chancy was produced between 1998 and 2001 in Toronto, Dartmouth, and Edmonton by The Queen of Puddings Music Theatre Company. In February 2009 the same company premiered Inês, which was nominated for a Dora Award. The children’s opera Elijah’s Kite was premiered in New York in 2006 by Tapestry New Opera Works with the Manhattan School of Music, and later presented at Rideau Hall in Ottawa before the Governor-General. His masques Orpheus and Eurydice and Aeneas and Dido (with words by André Alexis) were premiered by The Toronto Masque Theatre in 2004 and 2007. Swoon was premiered in December 2006 by the Canadian Opera Company, which has since commissioned a new opera. Other upcoming premieres include Norway’s Trio Mediaeval and the band of North Toronto Collegiate Institute.

For more information about James Rolfe, click here.