As with so many of Anna Clyne’s orchestral works, This Midnight Hour takes inspiration from nonmusical sources, in this case two poems. The first is Charles Baudelaire’s much-anthologised ‘Harmonie du soir’ (Evening Harmony) from the 1857 collection Les fleurs du mal. Stuffed with sensory observations and evocative similes – floral scent, tortured violins, a drowning, blood-clotted sun – the poem comprises a series of woozy repetitions that fold in on themselves like a hall of mirrors. The second is a three-line fragment from the Nobel Prize-winning Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez. In a translation by Robert Bly, it reads: ‘Music;/a naked woman/running mad through the pure night.
Rather than slavishly narrating the texts, Clyne borrows specific images and uses them as a starting point for her own ‘visual journey’. Baudelaire’s ‘melancholy waltz and languid vertigo’, for example, prompts a surprise passage at the halfway point of the work, in which the viola section is split in two, with one half instructed to play a quarter tone sharp ‘to emulate the sonority of an accordion playing a Parisian-esque waltz’.
The Jiménez, meanwhile, Clyne chose to interpret ‘with outbursts of frenetic energy’ – as in the work’s opening passage. Here the strings, divided into sub groups, play furious cascading figures that shift from left to right in stereo effect – a typical example of Clyne’s tendency to paint with thick layers of orchestral sound, as well as a nod to her early-career explorations in electroacoustic music. (Clyne does something similar in her Cello Concerto DANCE, in which the orchestra ‘essentially acts as one giant looping pedal’.)
Clyne places a firm emphasis on the string writing in This Midnight Hour. The work was written while she was Composer-in-Residence with the Orchestre National d’Îlede-France, a group renowned for its powerful low string section. Right from the frenetic opening, Clyne pushes the cellos and basses to the front of the texture with punchy, lively themes. Various solo instruments also have their moment in the sun, with flute, clarinet and double bass helping to shape the more intimate, chamber music-like moments. But it’s the brass that has the final say: at the work’s reflective close, a lyrical, folk-like tune is intoned over a modal accompaniment, evoking an eerie, faux-Tudor pathos cut dead with a bass drum. Despite its twelve-minute length, this concert opening is packed full of melody and character, unfolding in the style of a miniature tone poem and ending, quite literally, with a bang.
Anna Clyne
Born and raised in the UK but based in the United States for most of her professional life, Anna Clyne has proved a hugely popular composer on both sides of the Atlantic. Her approachable, almost filmic compositional style and collaborative ethos has led to fruitful residencies with, among others, the BBC, Chicago, Helsinki, and Castile and León Symphony orchestras, as well as a clutch of new-music hits, not least Night Ferry (2012) and the double violin concerto Prince of Clouds (2012), both of which featured in the 2015 Grammy nominations.
While hugely varied, Clyne’s output often demonstrates her interest in translating ideas from one artistic medium into another. Two works for voices and ensemble, As Sudden Shut (2012) and her recent BBC Proms commission The Gorgeous Nothings (2024), draw on poems by Emily Dickinson; the structure of The Seamstress (2014–15), an ‘imaginary ballet’ for violin and orchestra, is modelled on the ten lines of W B Yeats’ poem ‘A Coat’; her Piano Concerto ATLAS (2023) was inspired by a collection of photographs and sketches by German artist Gerhard Richter; while This Moment (2023) reflects on the calligraphy of Vietnamese Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh.
Clyne’s music is also characterised by an imaginative use of sound. Many of her earlier works, such as <<rewind<< (2005–06) and 1987 (2008), flirted with electroacoustics. More recently, The Gorgeous Nothings makes use of software, developed with sound designer Jody Elff, that allows orchestral timbre and pitch to be modified in real time. Evocative acoustic effects also abound: the same piece features a bicycle wheel with playing cars attached to the spokes so that, when spun, it creates a fluttering sound, bringing to life Emily Dickinson’s ‘Wheels of Birds’. Still, such effects always serve a musical end, and Clyne’s modernist instincts are tempered by her love of folkish melody, lyricism and drama.
Read the full programme note and profile on the London Symphony Orchestra website