Such Sweet Thunder

Such Sweet Thunder

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Amazon Hippolyta describes how, while hunting with Hercules and Cadmus, the barking of the hounds created an amazing sound:

for, beside the groves,

The skies, the fountains, every region near

Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard

So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.

Which goes to show that even a dog act can occasionally be musical, or, as Theseus puts it elsewhere in the play, ‘The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worse are no worse if imagination amend them’. The image of ‘one mutual cry’ is nicely cosmic, and ‘such sweet thunder’ seemed ideal as a title for its evocative nature and easy bowdlerisation. Shakespeare’s play is also the point of convergence for works by Henze (the Eighth Symphony) and Britten (the eponymous opera) so it seemed an appropriate title for this occasion.

Unlike Henze’s, this short piece doesn’t seek to evoke any specific moment or character from the play, but to reflect some aspects of its atmosphere. Like the play’s characters, the musical material – or maybe the hapless composer – often finds itself lost in the forest, and several different musical realms coexist and occasionally coincide.

The piece opens mysteriously, with tremolandos from the low strings, short motives from bass clarinet and the odd gong stroke, and this texture clears once or twice for some distant trumpet fanfares. After a bridge passage there is a spot of Mendelssohnian scurrying in the upper strings, interrupted by a tutti gesture which returns occasionally. There is a more extended fast section – more scurrying, some tossing of motives around the orchestra until a tremolo of flute harmonics interrupts. This signals a slower section which features various solos – notably violin and contrabassoon – a reminiscence of the opening and finally a melody from cor anglais and trumpet against a shimmering string background which dissolves.

Such Sweet Thunder was commissioned by Symphony Australia for the Sydney Symphony, and is dedicated to Markus Stenz.