Josephine Stephenson

Rest(e)

In English, those who rest" are the dead: those who have gone before. In French, on the other hand, those who "restent" are the survivors, those who remain, who stay behind. In her diptych for mezzo-soprano, cello and piano, Rest(e), Josephine Stephenson exploits these complementary meanings to explore the experience of grief. The piece is in two parts, each of which pairs a sonnet by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) and a short poem by Renée Vivien (1877-1909), a British poet who wrote in French. In the first two poems, Rest and Épitaphe, the person who has died is seen from the outside ("Oh earth lie heavily upon her eyes"; "Doucement tu passas du sommeil à la mort") ; in the latter two, Lassitude and Remember, it is the dying person who talks to those who will survive him or her ("Je dormirai ce soir d'un large et doux sommeil"; "Remember me when I am gone away"). The music brings together these two movements rhythmically, melodically and harmonically; in each half, for instance, the first song has a more mobile rhythm, particularly in the vocal part, as well as many tritones and fragments of whole-tone scales, while the music of the second songs is rhythmically more stable and deals more in perfect fourths and fifths. A few discreet melodic motifs recur throughout the score, such as the plaintive semitone oscillation on the words, "Au fond du Crépuscule / Où sombrent les couleurs" (Épitaphe), which comes back in "Je dormirai ce soir" (Lassitude). The imminence of death inspires a delicate, transparent music without pathos, and a confident tone. And when the sound fades in the last bars, we are reminded of the meaning of the title in music, where a "rest" is silence." - Hélène Cao