The music theatre version of The Night Bride was composed for a concert in a hall fitted with a quadrophonic sound system in Vienna in 2012. The piece was to be composed for soprano and narrator, to be performed by Anikó Tóth, and cimbalom, performed by Tim Williams of Psappha. The rest of the composition would be quadrophonic electronic music created from field recordings, as well as Anikó Tóth's voice.
After Mike Sizemore delivered the libretto, based on my short story and the comic illustrated by David Kennedy (see previous blog post),the first stage of the composition was a field recording trip to the Székelyföld, a Hungarian speaking region of Transylvania, in modern day Romania.
There were a number of things drew me to recording in that area. First and foremost, it is a beautiful, relatively unspoilt area of Europe, so why not travel there? Secondly, the Székely, or Szeklers, are a very interesting sub-group of the Hungarians, who speak their own dialect and to this day maintain different customs. Bram Stoker's fictional Count Dracula was Székely and the folk story that inspired my short story was originally from the Székelyföld. I also wanted to record a lot of nature sounds to form the backdrop of my story and I wanted to make sure that they were the authentic natural sounds of the region in which my story was set.
Perhaps, more importantly, it was in the Széklyföld that I got to know my future wife, Anikó Tóth, while on a trip there in 2003.
Anikó and I had met each other in Budapest through a mutual friend, Boglarka, from the Széklyföld, Transylvania. We had had coffee together a few times, but nothing had really come of it. However, in Spring that year, Anikó and I both received separate invitations from Bogárka to spend Easter with her and her family in Transylvania. As we would be heading in the same direction, we decided we would take the twelve hour train journey together to Székelyudvárhely. Since then, I've been able to tell people that I got to know my wife on a steam train travelling through the Carpathian Mountains.
There is a Hungarian folk song used in The Night Bride that I first heard on that trip. The song is called Túl a vízen, which translates as On the Other Side of the Water. It's an achingly beautiful song that Anikó sang for our hosts as we drove around the Transylvanian countryside. Each folk singer decorates the melody of this song in a very individual way. The decorations distinct to Anikó when she sings that particular song formed an important basis on which the piece was developed.
My companion for the field recording trip in 2012 was Professor Alan E. Williams, a very dear friend who also happens to be an expert on all things Hungarian. Alan was also developing a piece called Centre/Periphery about Hungary and Transylvania for the same concert as The Night Bride, so the stars seem to have aligned perfectly.
In the piece, you will hear sounds recorded around a village called Homoródszentmárton, such as the church bells and church organ, and the sounds of Transylvanian forest in Springtime.
