Melodrama for narrator and piano by Gideon Klein

Type	Melodrama
AKA	The Poplar Tree (Landscape)

This short, yet intense and moving melodrama for narrator and piano, was composed in July 1938. It should be stated that because Klein’s handwriting is not totally legible, the date of composition might be a year later, 1939. In either event, this dark and brooding work reflects uncertain times.   It was not performed publicly until the 'Out of the Shadows: Rediscovering Jewish Music and Theatre' festival in the Czech Republic, where it was premiered in Pilsen in September 2016.  It was the last composition of Klein's school years, completed before he left on a month-long tour of Italy, and before embarking on full-time study at the Prague Conservatory. Topol (The Poplar Tree) is the most interesting piece from this period to engage with texts, in this case from the poem Krajina (‘Landscape’), by Vilém Závada (1905-1982).  At the end of the fair-copy manuscript, Klein wrote “These were good times”. In paler ink than the rest of the manuscript, these words might have been added at a later date. Music for narrator and piano was not an especially new idea; there are examples by Schubert, Schumann and Liszt, amongst others. However, Klein might have encountered some of the melodramas by the Prague-born composer Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859-1951), one-time Director at the Conservatory in the inter-war years. In his piece, Klein consolidates the modernist style found in so much of his music at this time. But more so than any of the music to date, Topol demonstrates far more control on how structure arises from the material itself. In this case, the unity is achieved by the harmonic language with complex chords of major sevenths and minor ninths. It marks a further step towards a more mature compositional style, made all the more moving by the inclusion of inscription at its end, a portent of a vanishing existence. 

This work will be published by Baerenreiter in August 2022 under the title Krajina (‘Landscape’), along with a new edition of Klein's Piano Sonata, edited by Ondřej Pivoda.

TOPOL (THE POPLAR TREE) [Text: Vilém Závada, with the original title Krajina (Landscape)]

(English translation by Hana Trojanová)

Spilled plain

Small houses are floating on it like little white boats

A clod clods

Clods sparkling whiteness of clouds is rushing ochre boulders past the horizon

In the doorway of pain last drops congealed into crystals

And the wood of statues hurriedly phosphorescing

A Gothic silhoutte

This is a vignette resounding through the history like an oyster on the shore sounds through the sea

This is the horn sound turned into sadness and wrapped all in itself caught fire all over the distance by a sorrowful prayer

It is ablaze