“What’s your dark meaning of this light
word?” (Shakespeare, Love’s Labor’s
Lost, Act V scene II)
Stage
Directions: The scene takes place against a curtain
backdrop. The sole piece of furniture is a chaise-longue,
on which the woman is reclining when the scene opens. The
man is standing in back of the chaise-longue. The
instruments may be placed onstage to the left of the
performers, if so desired. (The stage directions are to
serve as suggestions for actions and can be altered.)
This work is a
kind of fantasy, sometimes serious, sometimes ironic or
humorous, in which the overt meaning of the text should
not be taken literally. It deals with growth,
replacement, survival and being in a relationship. The
directions in the score are only suggestions and may be
changed and elaborated upon freely. A chaise-longue is a
suggested prop. The singers could wear formal evening
dress. In the version directed by Martha Graham for the
Composers’ Forum in New York City the
instrumentalists sat on one side of the stage, the action
taking place on the other side. Miss Graham dressed the
singers in formal clothes of the Edwardian period. In
addition, she used three male dancers, who set the stage
with artificial rosebushes in pots, and who were utilized
during pauses between sections. The work may also be
performed as a concert piece.
–Vivian Fine, notes to the score
Although the
text is a straightforward discussion about the growing
habits of various kinds of roses, such as floribunda,
hybrid tea roses, and climbers, Fine saw an opportunity
to consider the text as a metaphor for human
relationships. Her previous work with dance composition,
especially Doris Humphrey’s The Race of
Life, fueled Fine’s imagination for
considering Tilly’s article about growing roses as
a scene, much like a chamber opera Fine divided the
article into five sections: (1) “Longevity an
interesting point on which to speculate,” (2)
“Some must be discarded,” (3)
“Replacement and survival,” (4)
“Ramblers and climbers,” and (5)
“Protection and mortality.” She indicated
certain props and actions for the soprano and tenor.
Martha Graham directed the première, which was May
15, 1956, at her dance studio. In notes which accompany
the score Fine described the staging: “In the
version directed by Martha Graham for the
Composers’ Forum in New York City the
instrumentalists sat on one side of the stage, the action
taking place on the other side. Miss Graham dressed the
singers in formal clothes of the Edwardian period. In
addition, she used three male dancers, who set the stage
with artificial rose bushes in pots, and who were
utilized during pauses between sections.”
Fine’s sense of humor and compositional talent
merged to produce one of her finest compositions and a
predecessor for her future operas.
Although A Guide to the
Life Expectancy of a Rose is not recorded
professionally, there is a tape recording of the
première, and what is immediately apparent from
listening is the text’s clarity. The
audience’s laughter recorded on the tape confirms
this fact. Fine knows how to compose for singers so that
every word is audible. There are some spoken words,
sections of recitative, duets, solos, and a short spoken
passage resembling sprechstimme. Her keen sense of
rhythmic flow complements the text’s natural
declamation, plus her innate musical hearing allows her
to write lines that enhance the words. Fine reported that
she heard the piece while she was composing it and
composed it chronologically and in full score….
The instrumental ensemble
of flute, violin, clarinet, ‘cello, and harp
provides color and texture. Sometimes vocal lines are
doubled or punctuated by the ensemble. At other times the
instrumental counterpoint provides a further commentary
about the text such as the twisting lines that begin
section four, “Ramblers and climbers” or an
ostinato that accompanies the woman’s text
discussing a rosebush’s healthy roots. There are
several instances in which an instrument acts as a
vocalist. An especially interesting example is when the
male vocalist chants a text “there are ever so many
conditions that influence longevity” while
accompanied by a solo pizzicato cello line that was a
melody he had sung four measures previously, creating a
situation in while he is singing against himself. A
Guide to the Life Expectancy of a Rose is sixteen
minutes long, and the listener hears it as one complete
work. Sections are apparent by staging directions, which
Fine included in the score….Short instrumental
introductions set the mood, except for the last section,
which functions as a recapitulation repeating previous
music from sections one and two, which have been adjusted
for text considerations.
–Heidi Von Gunden,
The Music of Vivian Fine, Scarecrow Press,
1999
A
Guide [became] one of Fine’s most successful and
often-discussed works. In this piece, which is scored for
two solo voices (soprano and tenor) and chamber ensemble
(five instruments: flute, violin, clarinet, cello, and
harp—the pick of the “softer
instruments,” as described by Riegger), the element
of humor surfaces once again. Fine tells how she
discovered the piece’s title and its story.
”A Guide to the Life
Expectancy of a Rose” is the exact name of an
article that appeared in The New York Times
Garden Section [by S.R. Tilley]… I just loved the
title; I just saw it and I remember clipping it out. It
seemed to me so beautiful. A guide to the life expectancy
of a rose; it’s just sheer poetry. Of course, for
something to strike you, there has to be something
cooking inside yourself. Sometimes you’re not aware
of what’s cooking. You’re made aware that
something is taking place inside by response to something
that one comes across on the outside… It [A Guide]
tells about the growing of roses, what will live and what
will die, and what has to be pruned away. This became a
dialogue about the relationship between this man and this
woman, expressed through this language of growing
roses.
Fine’s setting of the
text is what gives this work its humor and glorious
appeal. Wallingford Riegger says, “By the use of
exaggerated stresses and cleverly prosody she has
transformed the pedestrian seriousness of the words into
something hilariously funny.” The
“serious” words to which he refers are
phrases such as, “there are no tables of life
expectancy,” and “it is impossible to quote
any real statistics as to the longevity of a
rosebush.” The instrumental ensemble underscores
such words’ meanings and descriptions, at times
using contrapuntal devices, such as inversion and
three-part canon.
–Leslie Jones, “The Solo Piano Music of
Vivian Fine,” Doctor of music arts thesis,
University of Cincinnati, 1994