Van Gogh (1991) 63'

program note

I started writing Van Gogh because of my obsession with the letters Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo. I assembled the texts myself, drawing from these letters, in many cases combining lines from different letters or from different places within the same letter. What attracted me so much to Van Gogh’s writing was the pain, rawness and brutal honesty. I found it hard to believe that anyone could tell another person, even his brother, the raw emotions that Van Gogh experienced — so painful, lonely and humiliating.

I began working on these songs in the late 1980s, making trips to Holland and Southern France to get the vibe of the areas that Van Gogh wrote about. I wrote “Borinage” first and originally sang that piece myself.

Early presentations of the piece were called Van Gogh Video Opera. These included video by Elliot Caplan and were performed in Vienna and in New York City in the early 1990s. In the fall of 2003, the Crash Ensemble performed it in Dublin and for that occasion I re-orchestrated the piece, adding three instruments (cello, bass, piano).

The piece is divided into six parts and it follows the arch of Van Gogh’s life chronologically.

––Michael Gordon

Libretto:
1. London
A clergyman’s son who works for a living
Has no time or money to study at college
Would be happy to find a position related to the Church
And besides is a few years older than one usually is
I went to school when I was eleven
And stayed there till I was sixteen
Then I had to choose a profession
But did not know what to choose
Through the intervention of one of my uncles
Partner in the firm of Goupil and Company
Art Dealers and Publishers of Engravings
I got a situation in his business in The Hague
For three years I was employed there
From there I went to London to learn English
Compelled by various circumstances
I’ve left the House of Goupil and Company
But as my aim is a situation with the Church
Though I have not been educated for the Church
Perhaps my travels
My experience in different countries
Of mixing with various people poor and rich
Religious and irreligious
Of work of different kinds
Of days of manual labor, days of office work
Perhaps the speaking of languages
May partly make up for the fact that I have not studied at College
But the reason I would rather give
For introducing myself to you
Is my innate love for the Church
And every thing connected with it
That has slumbered now and then
But is roused again and again

2. Borinage
There is an old academic school
A steel armor of prejudice and convention
There may be a great fire in our soul
And no one ever comes to warm themselves by it
One must tend that inward fire
Wait with how much impatience for the hour
Dear Theo
One of the reasons I am out of employment now
That I have been out of employment for years
Is simply that I have other ideas
Than the gentlemen who give their places
To gentlemen who think as they do
Dear Theo
I would be very glad if you could see in me something other than an idle fellow Because there are two kinds of idleness
There is the man who is idle from laziness and lack of character
From the very baseness of his nature
Then there is the other idle man
Who is idle in spite of himself
Who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action
Because he seems to be imprisoned in some cage

3. The Hague Part I
Then I thought I would like to be with a woman
I cannot live without love, without a woman
And dear me I had not far to seek
I found a woman
Not young, not beautiful, nothing remarkable
I said to her: listen
We need not make ourselves drunk to feel something for each other
Just put into your pocket what I can spare
When you wake up in the morning
And see that you are not alone
But see there in the morning twilight
A fellow creature beside you
It makes the world seem so much more friendly
More friendly than religious diaries
More friendly than white washed Church walls
Sometimes when I walked the streets
So lonely and in misery without money
I felt that they were my sisters

4. The Hague Part II
To work for the market is in my opinion not the right way
Rather more trouble on a serious study
Than a kind of chic to flatter the public
(I heard he laughed at my becoming a painter)
Sometimes in moments of worry I have longed for some of that chic
But thinking it over I say: No! let me be true to myself
The principal reason for my not making water colors
Is that I must draw more seriously paying more attention to proportion
That is more practical than his practical talks about what is saleable
Today I met Mauve and had a very painful conversation with him
I asked him to come see my work and talk things over
Mauve refused point blank: I will certainly not come to see you
At last he said: You have a vicious character
Then I turned around
It was on the dunes and I walked home alone
I have ears Theo
If somebody says ‘You have a ’
What ought I do then?
Then Tersteeg told me: Mauve and I will see to it that Theo stops sending you money
You failed before and now you will fail again, it will be the same old story
Of one thing I am sure: You are no artist, you started too late, you must work for a living
Theo, if you can, write soon
And of course, the sooner you can send the money the better it would be for me
I spent my last penny on this stamp.

5. Arles
Dear Theo
Whole days pass without my speaking to anyone
Except to ask for dinner and coffee
And it has been like that
But the loneliness doesn’t worry me because I have found the brighter sun
And its effect on nature so absorbing
I have no thought of fatigue
I’ll do another painting this very night and I’ll pull it off
I am not conscious of myself anymore
And the paintings come to me as if in a dream

6. St. Remy
I think I have done well to come here
For by seeing the actual truth about madness
I am losing my fear of the thing
And the change of surroundings is doing me good
Though there are some who howl and rave continually
In spite of that people get to know each other very well
I can for instance sometimes chat with one who speaks incoherently
A new man has arrived who is so worked up
That he smashes everything and shouts day and night
He tears his shirts violently too
And up till now though he is all day long in a bath
He hardly gets any quieter
They say we must put up with others
So that others will put up with us
And help each other when attacks come on
They told me of a case where someone had wounded himself as I did in the ear Its almost a whole month since I came here
Not once has the least desire to be anywhere else come to me
The treatment of the patients at this hospital is certainly easy
One could follow it even while traveling
For they do absolutely nothing
Yesterday I began again something that I see from my window
A field of yellow stubble that they are plowing
A canvas I am struggling with begun some days after my attack
A Reaper
The study is all yellow, terribly thickly painted
But the subject is fine and simple
For I see in this reaper a vague figure fighting like the devil in the midst of the heat
To get to the end of his task
The image of death in the sense that Humanity might be the corn he is reaping But there’s nothing sad in this death
It goes its way in broad daylight
Flooded by a sun’s golden light

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