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Mirrors and Reflections

From Alice's Looking Glass, Whitman's hand mirror and Rilke's Lady at the Mirror to Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man, Britten's Narcissus and Machaut's Ma fin est mon commencement.

Readings by Henry Goodman and Lisa Dillon as we peer at our reflections and think about what the mirror tells us. From the topsy-turvy world in Alice's Looking Glass to the corrupted image in Walt Whitman's hand mirror, the cracked shaving mirror in Joyce's Ulysses and Rilke's languid Lady at the Mirror, and Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man to Britten's version of the Greek myth of Narcissus. We begin with Guillaume de Machaut's Ma fin est mon commencement and end with Jackson Hill's version. On the way we'll encounter the music written by Lalo Schifrin for a Bruce Lee film in which Lee confronts his enemy in a mirrored room, Haydn鈥檚 Symphony No. 47 - sometimes called 鈥楾he Palindrome鈥� because of its third movement, the Menuet al Roverso in which the second part of the Minuet is the same as the first, but backwards and Arvo P盲rt's infinity mirror Spiegel Im Spiegel in which the tonic triads are endlessly repeated with small variations as if reflected back and forth.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Readings

Sylvia Plath - Mirror
Walt Whitman - A Hand Mirror
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge - The Other Side of the Mirror
Charles Simic - Mirrors At 4am
Lewis Carroll - Alice Through the Looking Glass
Louis MacNeice - Reflections
Seamus Heaney - Personal Helicon
Charles Baudelaire trans. Roy Campbell - Man and the Sea
Thomas Traherne - Shadows in the Water
James Joyce - Ulysses
Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Edward Snow - Lady at the Mirror
Thomas Hardy - Moments of Vision

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Tue 29 Dec 2020 18:15
大象传媒 Radio 3

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Music Played

Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes

  • 00:00

    Guillaume de Machaut

    Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement

    Performer: Early Music Consort of London.
    • VIRGIN CLASSICS VER5612842.
    • CD1 Tr11.

  • Sylvia Plath

    Mirror read by Lisa DIllon

  • Walt Whitman

    A Hand Mirror read by Henry Goodman

  • 00:04

    Arvo P盲rt

    Spiegel im Spiegel

    Performer: Vadim Gluzman (violin), Angela Yoffe (piano).
    • BIS CD1434.
    • Tr6.

  • Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

    The Other Side of the Mirror read by Lisa Dillon

  • 00:14

    Elvis Costello

    Deep Dark Truthful Mirror

    Performer: Elvis Costello.
    • Warner Bros Records B000002LGU.
    • Tr3.

  • Charles Simic

    Mirrors At 4am read by Henry Goodman

  • 00:18

    Georges Auric

    Le Miroir et le Gant

    Performer: The Moscow Symphony Orchestra.
    • NAXOS 8557707.
    • Tr21.

  • Lewis Carroll

    excerpt from Alice Through the Looking Glass read by Lisa Dillon

  • 00:24

    Alfred Reynolds

    Ballet of the Talking Flowers

    Performer: Royal Ballet Sinfonia.
    • MARCO POLO 8225184.
    • Tr3.

  • Louis MacNeice

    Reflections read by Henry Goodman

  • 00:29

    Captain Beefheart

    Mirror Man

    Performer: Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.
    • SONY MUSIC B00002DF8E.
    • Tr3.

  • Seamus Heaney

    Personal Helicon read by Lisa Dillon

  • 00:34

    Benjamin Britten

    Narcissus

    Performer: Robin Williams.
    • FACTORY FACD236.
    • Tr8.

  • Charles Baudelaire, trans. Roy Campbell

    Man and the Sea read by Henry Goodman

  • 00:38

    Franz Schubert

    Der Fluss

    Performer: Dieter Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano).
    • DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4372252.
    • CD3 Tr17.

  • Thomas Traherne

    Shadows in the Water read by Lisa Dillon

  • 00:45

    Michael Berkeley

    Abstract Mirror

    Performer: Thomas Carroll (cello), Chilingirian Quartet.
    • CHANDOS CHAN10364.
    • Tr1.

  • James Joyce

    excerpt from Ulysses read by Henry Goodman

  • 00:59

    Lalo Schifrin

    Broken Mirrors

    Performer: Lalo Schifrin.
    • WARNER BROS BS-2727.
    • Tr9.

  • Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Edward Snow

    Lady at the Mirror read by Lisa Dillon

  • 01:03

    Joseph Haydn

    Symphony No. 47: Menuet al Roverso

    Performer: The Hanover Band.
    • HYPERION CDA66522.
    • Tr12.

  • Thomas Hardy

    Moments of Vision read by Henry Goodman

  • 01:07

    Jackson Hill

    Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement

    Performer: New York Polyphony.
    • BIS BISSACD1949.
    • Tr15.

Producer's Notes

鈥淥 wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!鈥�

To A Louse 鈥� Robert Burns

Whenever we study our reflection in the mirror, there is an echo of Burns鈥� heartfelt wish, possibly tempered with a sense of relief that our view of ourselves remains intensely subjective.听 But flickers of truth can still bleed through, catching us unawares. There will be plenty of staring into mirrors and scrutinising the reflections during the course of this programme, but we begin with some playful mirror imagery 鈥� Guillaume de Machaut鈥檚听 Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement.听 The words are not so much a text as the instructions for the performance.听 For the three parts of this rondeau, their beginning is literally their end as they are all palindromic.

Sylvia Plath gives a voice to the mirror 鈥� impassively reflecting back all that it sees, including the gradual decline over time of the woman who looks into it 鈥� while the hand-mirror in Walt Whitman鈥檚 poem offers a devastating portrait of the individual who glances at it, corrupted and ruined all too soon.听

The title of Arvo Part鈥檚 Spiegel Im Spiegel translates as either "mirror in the mirror" or听 "mirrors in the mirror鈥�, referring to an infinity mirror - endless images reflected by parallel plane mirrors.听 In this piece the tonic triads are endlessly repeated with small variations as if reflected back and forth. The structure of the melody is created by phrases characterised by an alternation between ascending and descending movement with the fulcrum on the note A, contributing to the impression of a figure reflected in a mirror.

In Mary Elizabeth Coleridge鈥檚 The Other Side of the Mirror, the distraught narrator sees herself stripped of all pretence and artifice, despairing and almost unrecognisable.听 She catches this all too revealing glimpse of herself in the same 鈥榙eep, dark, truthful mirror鈥� that Elvis Costello sings about.听 The mirror that the subject of his song is going to have to look into sooner or later and face up to who he really his.

Charles Simic, in Mirrors At 4am, suggests that, rather than this head on confrontation, we should approach mirrors surreptitiously, avoid imposing ourselves upon them and allow them to continue their peaceful rumination on the opposite wall.

As Simic suggests, there is something mysterious about mirrors 鈥� uncanny, almost magical 鈥� so it鈥檚 not surprising that they play a pivotal role in certain fairy tales including Snow White and The Snow Queen.听 In Jean Cocteau鈥檚 1946 film adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, Belle is given a magic mirror by the Beast which allows her to observe what is happening far away.听 When she sees that her father is gravely ill, the Beast gives her a magic glove which takes her instantly to the sick man鈥檚 bedside.听 This is Georges Auric鈥檚 score for that particular episode 鈥� Le Miroir et le Gant.


Possibly the most famous mirror in children鈥檚 literature is the one that Alice climbs through in听 Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.听 Here she is, peering longingly into Looking-Glass House and capturing perfectly the way in which a mirror can take something familiar and make it mysterious.

Once she has climbed through the looking-glass, one of the first oddities that Alice encounters is the Garden of Live Flowers.听 Ballet of the Talking Flowers is taken from the music that Alfred Reynolds wrote for a 1947 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass staged at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Alice鈥檚 sense of a room鈥檚 reflection existing in a reality of its own and containing puzzling paradoxes is also at the heart of Louis MacNeice鈥檚 poem Reflections.听

鈥楨xisting in a reality of its own and containing puzzling paradoxes鈥� serves quite well as a description of Captain Beefheart鈥檚 work.听 Who is this mirror man of which he sings?听 I have no idea, but the sound of the Magic Band is like no other.

For thousands of years before the first mirrors were made 鈥� initially from polished obsidian and then from polished copper 鈥� humans had gazed at their likenesses in pools of still water.听 In Personal Helicon, Seamus Heaney recalls the fascination he felt as a child, staring into the depths of wells and seeing his face looking back at him from far below.听 The reference in the title is to Mount Helicon, the reputed site of the spring in which Narcissus caught sight of his reflection and, not realising that it was his own likeness, was unable to tear himself away from its compelling beauty.听

The fifth of Benjamin Britten鈥檚 Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, written for solo oboe and performed here by Robin Williams, is Narcissus 鈥� an evocation of the entranced stillness of the doomed youth, gazing at his reflection in a pool.

In Charles Baudelaire鈥檚 Man and the Sea it鈥檚 the entire ocean that reflects the man back at himself - not simply his appearance, but his nature too.

Schubert鈥檚 lied Der Fluss is his setting of a work by the Romantic poet Friedrich Schlegel and is sung here by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.听 The river of the title creates a new, shimmering landscape on its surface as it flows through the countryside, the stars rising from its depths when night falls.

This watery version of the world is also the subject of the 17th century poet Thomas Traherne鈥檚 Shadows in the Water.听 Much as Alice saw another realm, tantalisingly close, on the other side of the looking-glass, here a child听 finds that a puddle in the street is a peephole into a familiar yet inverted world.听

Michael Berkeley鈥檚 Abstract Mirror is a string quintet featuring two cellos.听 Berkeley uses the single viola as a kind of fulcrum between the pairs of cellos and violins and the title refers to the mirroring effect of this layout and also to a more general use of fragmentation, refraction and distortion in the treatment of the material.

Another distorted and fragmented image reveals itself in the opening pages of James Joyce鈥檚 Ulysses.听 Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan are having a slightly testy exchange as the latter shaves on the roof of the Martello tower which they are renting.听 The shave completed, their conversation turns to the cracked hand-mirror which Mulligan has been using.

Broken Mirrors is the piece of music that Lalo Schifrin wrote for the climactic scene in the 1973 Bruce Lee film Enter The Dragon, when Lee confronts his enemy 鈥� Mr Han 鈥� in a room full of mirrors.听 Lee defeats Han by smashing all the mirrors so that he is no longer confused by the reflections.听 The scene itself is like a distorted reflection of the final showdown between Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai.

Following this outburst of violent action, we begin to wind down towards the end.听 In Rainer Maria Rilke鈥檚 poem Lady At A Mirror, the lady in question is preparing to retire, languidly observing herself in the mirror as she undresses, drowsily absorbed until awareness of her maid and her room pulls her back into the world.

Now for some more tricks with mirrors.听 Haydn鈥檚 Symphony No. 47 is sometimes called 鈥楾he Palindrome鈥� because of its third movement, the Menuet al Roverso.听 The second part of the Minuet is the same as the first, but backwards, and the Trio is written in the same way.

The mirror which Thomas Hardy considers in Moments of Vision does not hang on a wall, contained within a frame.听 It is the mysterious mechanism which occasionally grants us a flash of penetrating insight into ourselves, no matter how troubling or unflattering that glimpse might be.听 And who knows where else that image might be transmitted?

Finally, our end.听 Or our beginning, in this world of mirrors.听 For our beginning is our end and our end, our beginning.听 Here鈥檚 Guillaume de Machaut鈥檚 Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement again, but this time reimagined (or should that be refracted?) by Jackson Hill and performed by New York Polyphony.

听

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  • Sun 20 Nov 2016 17:30
    大象传媒 Radio 3
  • Tue 29 Dec 2020 18:15
    大象传媒 Radio 3

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