Musical Notes

On this page you can find interpretive notes on some of Marcelle's concert repertoire.

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Opus Sobrietate

A performance in music, photographic art and architecture presented by Uitstalling

“… a wonderful piece of art! What an emotion, what a voice …” Danny Weckxs, Uitstalling Gallery, Belgium 2022

“ How a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y beautiful are these songs! So fragile, sensitive…” Bert Daenen, photographer, Belgium 2022

Six portraits by Bert Daenen grace the walls of the ancient sacred space. We enter this place of silence and soul as a group, representative of the society in which we live. The songs, each rewritten for accompaniment by a single cello (Hugo Fernandes), take on a new meaning in a new context…

“With darkness deep as is my woe” (Handel), brings us into the darkness. We have choices to make, as society, as mankind - we either conform to the roles that society has given us, that is expected of us, that is advertised to us and marketed into us, or we live and die trying to save our souls and our principles, our convictions, our beliefs, our essence. This is not far from the choice that Theodore has to make in Handel’s opera of the same name. Conquered, she faces the choice of imprisonment, degradation and violation both of body and soul or she must die to protect herself. However, we face a different reality out of the opera, we have a third option, enlightenment. We can grow and evolve, we can embrace each of our roles but not let it define us completely. We can transform and become our true essence.

Yet, this is not an easy journey and we face many hardships along the way. This battle can test our resolve; our faith in ourselves and our true nature or purpose. Why should we have to suffer? Even though we can intellectually understand the present moment as part of a greater picture, we can still feel the anger and be overwhelmed by the injustices of life which cause pain and suffering. This is beautifully epitomised in “Cujus animam gementem” by the violence, anger and keening that is written into the song. Mary, as mother of Christ, feels each stab wound inflicted upon her son and wails against the brutality which as mother she cannot bear. The plan to save humanity comes at too great a cost for the human maternal soul to endure. In this moment she is all fury, anger and strength, absorbing blow for blow the cutting into her mortal son’s flesh.

The human spirit yearns for company and the loss of a loved one is a physical experience of the pain of the Heart. Grief can consume and indeed, like a storm it must be allowed to run its course. Sometimes it can feel as though this storm will never end and, if we do not accept our loss, it can continue like a constant presence and weight within our Hearts. To grieve is a lonely and impossible journey which promises only emptiness as conclusion. It seems almost better to experience the pain of loss than the emptiness of acceptance and conclusion. That life can go on is cruel and inexcusable. “Il mio ben quando verra” looks at this battle between the Heart and the memory, the love, the loss and what is left with acceptance ... “Oh Dio, oh Dio... non c’e”.

The Heart can heal with time, but only with help from the Soul. In a moment of crisis, we can feel as though our very essence could be lost. Who are we if we are not the person we once were? How did we become this being that we would not recognise as our self? “Giusto Ciel, in tal periglio” takes us into ourselves, into the depths of our souls as we look for hope, to the mercy of heaven, to help when there is none forthcoming, we are simply alone, and we arrive at the point of acceptance and recognising of what is... and this can only happen “when [we are] boiled down to nothing” (David Hallberg*).

Sometimes, we are fortunate enough to experience the miracle of creation, of birth. The role of Mother is an overwhelming all-encompassing existence consisting of love and loss. The simplicity of De Falla’s lullaby, encapsulated by the soulful notes of a single cello, soothing us on a level that is ancient and timeless, tapping in to our earliest bonds and the emergence of our first ‘self’ in the purity of infancy. The long days and short years irrevocably change you and for a short period, Mother, consumes every atom of your being! It is a beautiful, terrifying, unequivocal and relentlessly impossible journey of nurturing and creation, so magnificent, that we can become overwhelmed by its clarity in defining who the ‘self’ is...

The beauty of a strong role is alluring and numbing in its ability to placate our search for our true self. We can stay in this beautiful role, secure of our role in life and we can put our yearning for self-exploration to sleep quite easily. Monteverdi’s song “Oblivion soave” lulls us into a peaceful slumber. But, does the Soul’s yearning disappear in our slumber? It could, as it is so beautiful and entrancing, or we can awaken and cast off the comfortable mantle and take the next step.

Our lives can become defined by fear. The fear of holding on to what we know and the fear of letting go, of change, of growth, of accepting what is ... Desire in any form can be frightening and we must be brave to let go of our current state of being and leap into the unknown that is beckoning us! Che si può fare was written by an extraordinary female composer of the Baroque Period - Barbara Strozzi. Somehow, in that male dominated occupation and time, she managed to compose and publish eight volumes of her own music. As if that wasn’t a big enough feat, she managed to do this without any consistant patronage or church support. Her lyrical composition relies on the voice to soar and her work is imbued with depth and unspoken meaning. This song asks what we must do and what we must say in the face of suffering. It is sad but not desolate, there is an almost hopeful tone which cannot be ignored. There is a feeling of acceptance, of self analysis, of resignation - not in a negative sense but rather of the moment when we find ourselves perfectly in between two states and we have to surrender. Can we trust the seduction of this release after all we have been through to get to this point? We yield and in that moment we discover a new aspect of ourselves that we were unaware of. We accept, and then we cling to our new found enlightened and open state…

Yet, it is a moment, just one moment of all the many moments and roles and experiences that make us who we are. Even this blissful state we must release and climb into our true essence, our true state of imperfect perfection. Our strength and beauty lies in this contradiction within ourselves, we must accept that “things aren’t meant to be perfect, that’s what makes them beautiful” (Quinn Walker, age 11). We end in silence, the last dying note of the cello fading into stillness, into nothingness, into everything that is and isn’t, into acceptance, into all life and all consciousness, into the silence of nothing is where we must delve. “I drew near a green pine to see if it would console me. Seeing me weep, it wept also...” (Asturiana, De Falla)

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*Footnote:

“When I was boiled down to nothing, I was really forced to assess what’s important, and

what my artistic drive is, where I see myself going – what my contribution will be, having

weathered this storm. I’m a very different person than I was before the injury, and it’s time to

come out of the cocoon and share that.” - David Hallberg, ballet dancer

Copyright - All images and recordings by permission of Bert Daenen and Uitstalling Gallery 2022

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The Four Horsemen – At the end of the Rainbow

Performance Art in collaboration with Haidee Nel and Equus Gallery, Cavalli Estate

The Four Horsemen of the apocalypse are the White Horse of Conquest, The Red Horse of War, The Black Horse of Famine and the Pale Horse of Death. War, terrorism, death, loss, abuse, deceit and destruction - one doesn't have to look far to find apocalyptic scenarios!

 The performance - At the end of the Rainbow is a comment on the perception of Apocalypse. Change is the only constant that we know and judgment the inevitable outcome for all our actions. The performance is a kind of visual and audible picture exploring issues surrounding the end as we know it – a reflection of our hopes and fears. While Rainbows tend to imply hope and have many interpretations, the rainbow itself is nothing, merely a trick of the light in the rain clouds. It is an illusion that gives us joy. But, what other illusions do we readily succumb to in our lives? We are bombarded by information in this technological and consumerist age and should we choose to, we can live in a state of un reality, separated from our natural environment, from our actions as a species towards our planet, from ourselves and our loved ones!

 The dream state has become a daily occurrence through the use of hypnotic marketing, religious fundamentalism, entertainment and 'lifestyle' aspirations. It becomes easier to stay in this dream state after a while and this loss of conscious thought is the start of an apocalypse. Without facing our true emotions and striving for integrity, we cannot stay out of the fantasy traps, they feed our fears and we become ever more removed and so the fantasy becomes our preferred state of being.

 The Black dress in the performance is a symbol of the unknown, judgment and dream state.

The first song is from Manuel de Falla's Siete Canciones Populares Espagnolas. It is a lullaby – something pure and gentle. Yet, like a rainbow is beautiful, it is also nebulous and fleeting. If we allow ourselves to be lured into a permanent 'un' conscious dreamlike state, if we don't uphold truth and if we lose our integrity, then we become victims. This state can make us vulnerable to suggestion and feed our actions with fear. As our souls long to move forward, our desires can become confused and we can lose our way in terms of what is important.*

 The rainbow creature is representative of the unconscious, the layers of stuff accumulated by being a part of this human experience- creating a mass around who we really are. The rainbow also being a sense of hope, in this instance becomes a more sinister symbol as we become trapped in the illusion of the rainbow

Vivaldi's 'Spoza son disprezzata' looks at loss and pain. It deals with hope that becomes despair when the reality of the situation is faced. Should 'she' stay hopeful for her spouse's return or should she accept the loss and feel the pain of 'his' neglect and abandonment? The latter is too painful yet it is the only path for her salvation. Vivaldi makes her suffering so beautiful that it could become her constant and defining state. Yet if one is to grow, then that suffering must be allowed to cleanse the soul rather than numb it. Life in all its gruesome reality must be faced at some point.

 The last song looks at death and salvation. From Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, we see Mary as the mother of Jesus watching her only son take his last breaths. The bond between a parent and child is fundamental to our survival. It forms the very basis of our sense of self and our ability to love others. With the last breaths in the song we are brought to the void, the blackness and the end. The music ends in silence.

 The white figure leaves the rainbow skin behind and reveals the true self once more but faces an unknown judgement. By becoming conscious, we awaken, but, we must then face the inevitable and stand vulnerable, stripped and exposed to our essence...

 What do we do now? Do we awaken or do we stay in the darkness? Are the Four Horsemen at the end of the Rainbow?

 * paraphrased from 'Eastern Body, Western Mind' by Anodea Judith

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Flowers in Art Exhibition - Performance Art in collaboration with Artist Haidee Nel

The Castle, Cape Town

Flowers are life sustaining, beautiful, fragrant, colourful and delicate. A world without flowers is simply unimaginable. Apart from being a fundamental part of any ecosystem, without them our lives would lack beauty and also something essential. We have imbued flowers with a huge amount of symbolism and meaning over time. Birth, death, marriage, celebration, thanks, forgiveness, hope or joy can all be expressed by giving a single flower. Yet, despite our emotional link with flowers, our natural heritage is being destroyed faster than ever. The soil poisoned, the water polluted, natural ecosystems destroyed.

The song, Amarilli, is like the flower, both delicate and fragile in its beauty yet immensely powerful and poignant. The yearning to possess such a beauty is palpable in the repetitions within the song itself. The emotion is powerful yet how fragile and delicate a thing is emotion? How fragile is a flower? To posses it is to kill it! Yet, the desire remains...

Le Spectre de la Rose looks at how short lived beauty is. What is beauty? What is love? It is fleeting and yet so strong. The song is written in a way that it seems to waft like a petal to the ground. Beauty cannot be possessed and it is short lived and has no purpose yet it is coveted and prized even by those who have everything. Once it is gone it cannot be restored. The moral perhaps being to treasure it and not take it for granted as being eternal...

So too our natural landscape, our clear skies that display the stars and the moon. How poetic the natural world and how in danger! Melodia Sentimental celebrates the moon, love, desire, passion and the poeticness of inspirational vistas. What would our night sky look like if we could only see the orange haze of pollution? What if we could no longer see the moon? So, let us celebrate our natural heritage and the bounty that is nature but let us also treasure it, for it could be very short lived and impossible to restore. A world without flowers would after all be no world at all!

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 Aspectos d'Amore

The art of Love celebrated with Song and the art of Song celebrated with Love!

Love and music are linked in such a way, that to think of the one is to automatically think of the other. This relationship is explored here ~ the various aspects that make up love.

From the tragedy of a mother's loss in Vidit suum to the confident desire of Intorno and the fragile fearful longing of the delicate Amarilli, music has a way of capturing these emotions that are all one great emotion, love, as no other medium can. Gluck deals with the breathless excitement that a racing heart in love brings (O del mio dolce ardor) and it is Vivaldi who brings the loss of hope, the hurt of neglect, poignantly and beautifully across in Spoza son disprezzata*. The purity of line in these Aria Antiche transcends both translation and time and so we are able to enjoy them 400 years on.

Le Spectre de la Rose tells us that love is a fragile thing of beauty to be admired. Love is not always wonderful though and who more fitting than Shakespeare's doomed Ophelia to remind us of how fragile we can become in the face of loss and rejection? Poor Ophelia's madness and death by drowning are beautifully captured in Berlioz's haunting melody. The sound of the river and Ophelia's song weave in and out of each other until at the end they become a single melody.Absence is as the name indicates, the void that remains once love has gone. Berlioz seems to so perfectly understand that memories, once they are all that remain, can be both beautiful and painful, which is in a sense the essence of love, is it not?

The great song writer, Schubert, deals with passion, its promise and its consequences. In Ständchen we feel the pull of desire and passion. It has a wonderfully seductive masculine energy, which is brought out by the piano's bass line. Yet, it is in Gretchen am Spinnrade that we see the consequence of seduction - poor tragic Gretchen at her spinning wheel, destroyed through her passion yet entranced and unable to resist her inevitable doom! Schubert creates enormous tension between the delicate vocal line and the relentless spinning wheel which is a constant throughout the song.

Vesperal is a Brazilian song which deals with the beauty of Sunset. When the shadows of night touch the world like a kiss … While love can be passionate and painful, it is also the most basic of our needs. Cantiga de ninar is a gentle lullaby, the most basic relationship between music and love - how extraordinary that a little child can be so soothed by the love imbued in a song! Bachianas deals with love in a way the Brazilians and Portuguese would call saudade. There is no adequate translation for the word which loosely means 'to love and long for' and this song seems to me to be a longing for Brazil in all its beauty and vastness. Melodia Sentimental takes passion to new heights! What is love without passion after all? These soaring lines and sumptuous rhythms capture the vastness of this emotion in all its warmth and tangled glory as only the wild Villa - Lobos can!

These songs bring to light a partnership that is also a powerful 'love affair' of sorts, as artists ~ pianist and singer, work together to make music that would not be possible alone. It is a relationship that is stronger for being together than for being apart. That supports and enhances when the going is good and detracts and destroys when the going is bad! That soars and creates in a passion shared – if music be the food of love, indeed, play on!

Marcelle Volckaert 2011

*Sung in loving memory of Michelle Chapman (neé van Schalkwyk) 23/01/1970 - 7/09/2010

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Les Nuits d' été

Berlioz and Gautier take us on a roller coaster journey through the landscape of love in this beautiful song cycle.

We start delicately and charmingly with Villanelle (much like Spring). Reaching out playfully to passion, happiness and love. In this joyous awakening of the heart, there is little room for doubt and heart break. There is only the forward momentum of that which is new and full of life and promise!

With Le Specte de la Rose, one has the sense of LOVE itself being a thing of beauty, something to be admired and longed for, even if it is fleeting or un returned. I say un returned rather than unrequited, as I feel that LOVE here is not just that which is romantic love, but rather LOVE as a thing in and of itself - the love of Music for example, or of a child or a parent or a country etc. or Love which is enough in and of itself just to be! We have the first sense of sorrow which is to come, however, and the opposites of love start to creep in. How is this not inevitable, with the fragility and death of this beautiful rose - when all that is left at the end is the perfume? There is a certain cruelty of fate in this song, that the Rose itself is the only one aware of the devotion and gift that has been made. It is reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's 'The Nightingale and the Rose' and just as beautiful in its cruel sadness. Yet, for all the pain that we know is to come, there is a beauty in the LOVE itself which is worthy of contemplation and appreciation. The song ends with the knowledge of inevitable death and so begins the most beautiful but oh so painful part of the song cycle.

Sur les Lagunes is a lament to break even the most stoic of hearts! How to not weep in this song, was, as a singer, my greatest challenge. A more hauntingly poignant exploration of loss could not be possible and I have shed many a tear in trying to make this song my own! The music seems to come in waves, much like one experiences whilst in the throws of grief. The sense of absolute loss - both of the loved one and of reality itself is likened to being adrift on the ocean. How to possibly contemplate the crossing of a vast ocean of grief when one is completely lost and in turmoil, is almost too much to bear. That such a loss could be survived is in itself too cruel to contemplate and all that one feels is the immense waves that carry you away in desperate and soul achingly beautiful grief!

 I struggled to understand Absence when I first heard it. I could not understand the 'staticness', the lack of movement, the stillness if you like. However, after much thought, I understood that in the same way that one cries oneself out, so too does this music reach a point of acceptance. After the 'drifting about on the sea of grief' in the previous song, we now reach the other side. The memories do not reduce us to tears - the grief is spent and in its place we have the sepia coloured memories, like old photographs - still and lifeless but capturing the beautiful love of that past moment. We feel that we can look back and remember without becoming lost in the grief. We reach a point of peace and stillness, we make friends with our grief and it becomes a part of who we are. Those sepia coloured photos all that remain of both the love and most importantly, the loss. We are able to stand back and even momentarily forget that grief - we are poised to move forward once again.

I just love Clair de lune or Cimitiere as it is called! How beautifully Berlioz manages to capture the powerful influence of the past on the present. How do we possibly open our hearts to love again when we still feel the effects of its loss and the devastation this causes? How do we risk feeling all that grief and pain again? Much like the mists, which shroud the early morning landscape, lift in the heat of the rising sun; so too do the hauntings of our past slowly disappear. There is a re-awakening as we leave behind the ghosts of our past hurt. Like the dawn that heralds the new day, so too must our hearts eventually heal and feel once more the life-giving heat of a new LOVE!

We could not end on a more joyous and complete note. L'ill inconnue bubbles with such movement that, like watching a dance, it is impossible to not be swept along! But, what a difference to the earlier lament and horror of being swept out to sea! This, however, is a wonderful feeling of powerlessness. It has a maturity of acceptance that with love comes the vulnerability of hurt. It hearkens back to the first song in its youthful jubilance. However, this time we have loved, lost and learnt to survive! We are wiser, perhaps a little more doubtful that this will last forever, perhaps a little more discerning in giving away all of our heart quite so freely all at once? But, with a greater sense of appreciation, we are able to enjoy the journey now even though we know we could get hurt. The cycle of LOVE, of life will turn and like the new summer, if we are wise, we will enjoy it, take that journey and ask our hearts and our love 'where would you like to go'? The tide is waiting and we cannot be afraid, for who knows what beauty and joy will be discovered this time!

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Pergolesi's Stabat Mater

The suffering of love, the suffering of loss, the suffering of despair and the suffering of hope. This is the theme of this beautiful work, composed by Giovanni Pergolesi at a Franciscan monastery in Pozzuoli, shortly before his death. 

It has been critised for being too happy. However, our exploration of this work found much more than this! The death of Christ was intended to bring about the salvation of mankind, so, this joyous tone is necessary in order to remind us of our imminent salvation!

However, even more remarkable than the 'joy', are the musical moments depicting deep emotions which are sometimes not 'beautiful' or even enjoyable to listen to. Pergolesi seems to explore the 'humanness' of the crucifixion and so we experience a myriad of emotions, including anger. He is able to do this because he gives us the perspective of Mary.

Traditionally performed at Easter, the first half explores the pain and suffering of the crucifixion yet, it reminds us that even in our darkest moments, we have hope. Our emotions at their rawest level are nothing but pain and we hope that we have managed to capture this contradiction: that in this beautiful music is written the ultimate pain of a mother watching her son die. Not Mary as mother of God, but simply a mother like any other, tormented by despair, anger, resignation and love!

The cycle of life and death is our mortal partner and it is not too far for our imaginations to stretch to see in our minds eye, a dying young Pergolesi, furiously writing the last beautiful affirmations of his life while he prepares for his own death!

The declamatory style and expressiveness shows the infusion of the operatic style into the contrapuntal background of church music. It is almost operatic, for example, in the line "dum e-mi-sit" which is sung as depicting the dying breaths of Jesus. 

 This is a very female piece, having, as it does, an unusual female perspective in an otherwise very masculine Christian setting. We are drawn into a deep compassion for the mother of Christ as she watches her son dying on the cross. The mood then shifts at number 8 towards the ultimate goal of all this pain - redemption and salvation! It seems an almost impossible struggle to get beyond the pain of the present situation and to look to the future. The music seems to jump between joy and despair until eventually, we emerge triumphant at the end.

 Pergolesi's Stabat Mater was written in 1735 and was so successful that it became the most frequently published single work in its time.

1 Stabat Mater dolorosa - Duo    
2 Cuius animam gementem – Solo soprano
3 O quam tristis et afflicta - Duo
4 Quae moerebat et dolebat – Solo contralto
5 Quis est homo qui non fleret - Duo
6 Vidit suum dulcem natum – Solo soprano
7 Eia Mater, fons amoris – Solo contralto
8 Fac ut ardeat cor meum - Duo
9 Sancta Mater, istud agas - Duo
10 Fac ut portem Christi mortem – Solo contralto
11 Inflammatus et accensus - Duo
12 Quando corpus morietur - Duo
13 Amen - Duo

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Poema en forma de canciones

Joaquin Turina & Ramon de Campoamor

This song cycle is interesting in that although it looks at love, it seems to start backwards, with anger and perhaps betrayal and then at the end it reflects on love. What this in itself means, if anything, is unknown, but it is wonderfully passionate and very Spanish which was new territory for me.

I) Dedicatoria - the piano starts our journey, introducing us immediately to passion but with suspense and excitement!

II) Nunca olvida - What has caused this anger is not revealed to us but such betrayal that won't even be forgiven in the face of death seems to suggest, oddly that this was a deep and passionate love indeed!

III) Cantares - Odd then, that we next go to the usual 'beginning' – the pull of desire and falling in love. The voice and piano seem to take turns in depicting the rush of a beating heart that has fallen in love before the brain has had a chance to catch up! I find this song to have the same effect as when watching a dance and your feet start to tap! Perhaps that is the point of the previous song – that we have no choice when we lose our hearts and that therefore we can never really forgive because the choice to love has never been ours to begin with?

IV) Los dos miedos - The act of falling in love is of course riddled with fear and this song sums it up succinctly. By looking at a single act – physical closeness in 2 ways – before and after! Getting to the point of physical connectedness is riddled with fear because of course, once that step has been taken and that physical bond created, separation is then feared! It would seem that our childhood separation anxiety never really leaves, rather, it just gets transferred into new adult bonds! We guard our independence yet don't like being alone and crave that connection with someone else, fearing rejection and braving possible hurt and then when we have it (connection), we fear being separated and being independent again!

V) Las locas por amor - I can't decide if this last song deals with wishful thinking or cynicism! I have yet to meet a woman who is only interested in a short and passionate love affair! The world is full of abandoned lonely women! After the songs we have already done, it seems a strange sentiment! Perhaps then, it is more complex and cynically states that passion will burn out after a brief period or that all love eventually dies and so, short and sweet is all that can be hoped for? Or, perhaps it is different for the gods (Venus) as it is for music – that one can only experience extreme love and passion in a short moment and must be content with having reached those heights! I don't know, but, LOVE, I will and it certainly is a wonderful way to end (-: 

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