Music and Patrick White
Patrick White and Music
Frederick McCubbin, Bush Idyll (1893)
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Patrick White came fairly late to music, conceiving an opera in the early 1960s – Eliza Fraser – which never came to fruition, and working on a scenario for The Australian Ballet which also failed to materialise. For these, and his later opera libretto Births, Deaths and Marriages, see the Unpublished Works page.
White’s only significant lyrical projects were Aria and Six Urban Songs.
For information on Richard Meale’s opera, see the page Voss: The Opera.
Aria (“A Woman of Fashion and Distinction”) (1984)
Plot: The wife of a successful businessman tells her ongoing woes to her hairdresser, Angelino.
History: PW began work with composer Carl Vine on his opera libretto Births, Deaths, and Lotteries in the late 1970s. The project never came through, although Vine would compose the music for the original production of Signal Driver in 1982, and future productions of PW’s plays. However Vine ultimately set one passage of the opera as Aria, for soprano and chamber players, in 1984.
The work was commissioned by the Flederman Ensemble and performed by that group with English soprano Jane Manning at the Sydney Opera House. (SMH 1/5/1984). The piece was performed again by the same group at the BBC Late Night Proms Concerts, 1988. The aria was next performed by Merlyn Quaife as part of Dancing on the Edge, a concert of Vine’s work at Belvoir Street Theatre, 9/12/1991.
The piece was recorded by Mary Carewe, with piano accompaniment and arrangement by Philip Mayers, on the album Serious Cabaret (Orchard Classics, 2012).
Lyrics
[all copyright to the White estate]
Ah! to sink into the chair,
to feel dear Angelino’s fingers
flicker through one’s hair.
Life revives for wives of fashion and distinction.
Beneath the drier, in a steam of dreams,
and glimpses of one’s self in glossy magazines.
No-one but Angelino could understand
the suffering of a wife of fashion and distinction.
Oh! Oh! Oh woe!
There are no frills to having a multinational mate
(except he pays for them).
I’d look a fright if it weren’t for my Angelino.
After the committees, luncheons, and dinners,
the finger food by candle-light,
on top of it all a husband’s hands
fing’ring, kneading, bludgeoning.
Oh No! dahling, not above the chin!
You’ll wreck my hair!
Nothing will fob the monster off.
Not tears, not creams, not screams!
Consid’ring that he expects me to look pretty,
how perverse of him to martyrise my titty!
Do you think Angelino, I ought to change my image?
My persona has become a bore.
Strawb’ry makes me puke!
Shall we try a dash of ash?
… or would it …?
No woman of fashion and distinction
can afford to ape her husband’s secretary.
Do you think the bags beneath my eyes… ?
Could my face have slipp’d again?
Have them tack my bust, or I’ll look a perfect sack
at the committees, luncheons, dinners,
the finger-food by candlelight,
a woman of fashion and distinction undergoes,
on top of it all, a husband!
Oh! Oh! Oh woe!
I broke a precious fingernail, opening the Mercedes door.
The Porsche keeps stalling at the intersection.
Anyone can see the Rolls isn’t the vintage it ought to be.
But we mustn’t complain, must we?
In these starvation times!
Oh! Oh! Oh woe!
Times may change, but not the husbands.
As Angelino knows, he knows what a woman must suffer
in the name of fashion and distinction.
Make no mistake, she pays for her meal ticket,
the bigger the bill the more she pays.
Nothing will fob the monster off!
Not tears, not creams, not screams,
Not even blood!
Oh! Oh! Oh woe!
Oh! Oh! Oh woe!
Husbands are the same.
They’re off the same conveyor belt when midnight sounds.
There’s no avoiding the tax
a woman of fashion and distinction
pays at the end of the day.
Six Urban Songs (1986)
Six songs for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (piano reduction version also available).
History: PW wrote the first drafts of these songs in 1963 on a trip to the Blue Mountains, saying “there is more than a little spleen in them”. However he got distracted by writing the opera libretto Eliza Fraser for Peter Sculthorpe. David Marr notes than when White and Sculthorpe’s friendship fell apart, the composer had to lock himself in the lavatory to hastily copy out some of the lyrics before PW demanded them back! It appears that PW destroyed these originals.
In 1972, PW met Moya Henderson, who expressed a desire to collaborate on an opera of Voss. Henderson ultimately went to Germany to study, with the two keeping in touch by post. When The Australian Opera finally requested an opera, they chose Richard Meale – although Henderson had been the inaugural resident composer with the company. (Voss the opera premièred in 1986.) Nevertheless, Henderson obtained copies of these lyrics, and, in1983, she set them to music.
The songs are reflections of strange moments in Sydney life, ranging from a Polish man on a killing rampage in a theatre to a reflection on the ugliness of Sydney by day being transformed to beauty as night falls. The songs were first performed by singer Elizabeth Harwood and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (conductor: Antonio de Almeida) on 12, 14, and 15 April 1986, and were recorded on the opening night performance. It does not appear that they have been performed professionally since.
Henderson would be most recognised for her opera, Lindy, which premiered in 2002, and has led an extensive career that saw her made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1996 for her services to music.
- Night and Dreams
- Song of the Housewife
- To Watch the River
- Rhinestones
- Sick Song
- God
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