“Flower and Hawk” by Carlisle Floyd: Perceptions of truth and myth in the musical and dramatic character of Eleanor of Aquitaine

116 Pages·2004·2.79 MB·English

by  Kathleen Marie Allen

FLOWER AND HA WK BY CARLISLE FLOYD:
PERCEPTIONS OF TRUTH AND MYTH IN THE MUSICAL
AND DRAMATIC CHARACTER OF
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE
by
Kathleen Marie Allen
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Musical Arts
(Music Performance: Voice)
at the
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
2004
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UMI Number: 3127954
Copyright 2004 by
Allen, Kathleen Marie
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Preface
On May 16, 1972, Flower and Hawk, a monodrama for soprano and orchestra,
text and music by Carlisle Floyd, premiered at the Jacksonville, Florida Civic
Auditorium. Phyllis Curtain starred, Frank Corsaro stage directed and Willis Page led the
Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in the pit. The story of Flower and Hawk centers on
historical and mythical events in the life of Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine (11227-1204),
and takes place in the course of one day, through a series of present tense and memory
episodes. Commissioned to write an orchestral work for the Jacksonville Symphony,
Floyd composed the monodrama for Curtin, a devotee of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor,
a controversial political figure, has been consistently maligned and misrepresented
throughout history, beginning with the chroniclers and historians of her own day. Only
recently have scholars begun to uncover a more balanced perspective about her life.
This document provides a guide to the opera, focusing on the musical and
dramatic themes and motives that contrast the historical with the mythical aspects of the
life of this medieval queen, presented in episodic events by the composer/librettist.
Beginning with a factual background of Eleanor’s life, as it is best understood by scholars
today, I will briefly outline the pivotal moments in her life, including those used by Floyd
in his libretto. Following this will be a short biography of Carlisle Floyd as it pertains to
the development of his operatic and literary style. This portion of the discussion will
culminate in the compositional and performance history of Flower and Hawk.
The body of the analysis consists of two simultaneous discussions: the first
considers the six historically accurate events from Eleanor’s life depicted in this opera. I
highlight the motives and themes complete with musical examples taken from the piano-
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11
vocal score, depicting the “truthful” portion of the plot; the second includes the
“emotional development” of each scene, based on legend, myth, and the imagination of
Carlisle Floyd. Throughout, I compare and contrast Floyd’s rendering of Eleanor’s truth
with her myth.
Following the analysis, I document my personal experience of preparing,
studying, rehearsing and performing the work with piano accompaniment and stage
direction. I share the challenges, problems and rewards of staging such an experimental
work, as a multi-age and multi-dimensional character in sole command of the audience
for forty-eight uninterrupted minutes. Further, I point out the opera’s musical and
dramatic strengths and weaknesses, including the particular challenges of dealing with
poorly documented historical subject matter. Drawing on personal communication with
Floyd, I offer comment on his compositional style and theatrical goals for his operas in
general, and finally, I suggest a place in the operatic repertory for Flower and Hawk and
its potential for future performance.
Appendix I includes excerpts from other fictional works of the life of Eleanor of
Aquitaine, from various periods of history. Alternative perspectives on the dramatic
rendering of Eleanor as a historical personage can inform our understanding of Floyd’s
particular choices, both historically and with regard to the influences of his generation.
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Ill
Table of Contents
Preface i
Chapter 1: Eleanor: Truth and Myth 1
Chapter 2: Carlisle Floyd, Librettist 16
Chapter 3: Carlisle Floyd, Composer 23
Chapter 4: Flower and Hawk: Truth and Myth 30
Chapter 5: Flower and Hawk: Dramatic Plausibility 62
Chapter 6: Preparation of a Monodrama 75
Chapter 7: Carlisle Floyd: Stylistic Conclusions 86
Chapter 8: Final Thoughts on the Character of Eleanor 94
Appendix I: Eleanor in Poetry, Play and Song 98
Appendix II: An Interview with Carlisle Floyd 104
Bibliography 107
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Chapter 1: Eleanor: Truth and Myth
If there were a eontest today for “Woman of the Millennium,” Eleanor of
Aquitaine would be a strong contender. She began life as Countess of Poitou, Duehess of
Aquitaine and Gascony, and granddaughter of Guillaume the Troubadour. She went on
to gain the titles of Queen of the Franks, Queen of the English, mother of ten children.
Queen Mother of Richard I, the Lion-Hearted and John of Lackland, grandmother of the
Plantagenet ruling dynasty and other royal houses of Europe, patroness of troubadour
poetry, and promoter of the ehivalric art of courtly love and Arthurian legend. To
historical chroniclers of her day and later, she was less a queen than a general nuisance.
She committed the unpardonable sin for a woman of the twelfth century, or for that
matter, almost any other century: she possessed a mind of her own, and she used it with
great intelligence and confidence. Eleanor was a political star of Hollywood proportions,
which made her larger than life. She was the subject of beautiful troubadour poetry,
political intrigue, murderous legend, and countless myths, and remains largely
misunderstood and misrepresented up to the present day. Until recently, it has been
difficult to separate fact from fiction, resulting in a wide range of contradictory depictions
of this unique medieval woman in poem, play, opera, book, or movie.'
Eleanor was such a romantic figure that the temptation to color her life for
dramatic purposes is seductive, and Flower and Hawk is proof of such. The recent
' See for instance, the play/movie The Lion in Winter, the ballad “Fair Rosamund,” the poetry of Bernard
de Ventadour, or Gaetano Donizetti’s opera, Rosamunda dTnghilterra.
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publication of Alison Weir’s excellent biography in 1999 has cleared away a good deal of
the murkiness.^ I have used her book as a reference for more currently perceived truths I
will be claiming in this paper, as well as for popular myth, legend, and falsely reported
a
history.
Flower and Hawk takes place during one day of Eleanor’s life at the end of nearly
sixteen years of incarceration at the hands of her estranged second husband, Henry II,
King of England. Carlisle Floyd took six historically accurate events from the life of
Eleanor of Aquitaine, presented each event as a memory or present cireumstance, and set
the whole story to music. These events include; (1) her coronation as Queen of the
Franks in Paris at the age of fifteen in 1137;'^ (2) her demand in 1148 for an annulment of
her first marriage to Louis VII, which resulted in her being dragged by soldiers out of
Antioch one midnight during the second crusade; (3) her reign as Countess of Poitou,
during the celebrated period of the art of courtly love (cirea 1168), which she and her
daughter Marie of Champagne were thought for many centuries to have promoted and
defined; (4) aiding her sons in their rebellion against their power-obsessed father Henry,
which resulted in her confinement in 1173-74; (5) her release from prison upon Henry’s
death in July 1189; and finally, (6) the death of her son Richard at Chains in 1199.
In order to understand this twelfth-century woman, who was remarkable for a
time when an average European woman was largely controlled her whole life by men, it
is necessary to lay the background of Eleanor’s life. She came from a long line of
^ Alison Weir. Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999).
^ Weir, a British historian, has compiled sources contemporary to the time of Eleanor. She is the New York
Times best-selling author of many biographies. See Alison Weir. Henry VIII: The King and His Court
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2001), Elizabeth the Queen (London: Pimlico, 1999), The Children of Henry
VIII (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), The Wars of the Roses (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), and
The Princes in the Tower (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994).
New evidence suggests that Eleanor was actually born two years later than previously believed, which
would have made her thirteen at her first coronation, and eighty at the time of her death.
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ambitious, often lawless and strong-willed men and women. She was directly descended
from Charlemagne, and her grandmother Phillipa of Toulouse was the great niece of
William the Conqueror. Her grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, had the
reputation of being the first troubadour to write about the art of courtly love. After
returning home from the first crusade, he wrote poems, of which eleven survive. He
believed that a woman’s love should be given freely, not taken by a man, and he pursued
the love of women openly. His views were at direct odds with the Church, which at that
time considered the belief in women’s worth heresy.^ Eleanor’s mother Aenor was the
daughter of Dangerosa, Viscountess of Chatellerault, the married mistress of her
grandfather William. Her lineage was at once star-laden and soap-opera-like. The dukes
of Aquitaine were energetic, blasphemous and violent family landowners, who ruled a
headstrong, rebellious people and spent much of their time quelling insurrections by their
own vassals. This situation continued throughout Eleanor’s life and during the reigns of
her husbands and both her sons.
As to her character, Alison Weir gives many examples of chroniclers who
described Eleanor in every way but her physical characteristics.^ She was reputed to
have been more than beautiful, or “perpulchra”— athletic, intelligent, sophisticated,
impetuous and headstrong. The troubadour Bernart de Yentadom described her as
gracious and lovely, the embodiment of charm, with lovely eyes and noble countenance.^
The chronicler Richard le Poitevin said that she had a taste for luxury and refinement.
She loved music, riding and falconry, could speak both langue d’oc and langue d’oeil.
^ Church Fathers promoted the writings of St. Paul, taken out of context to abjure a woman to “learn in
silence and be subject to her husband at home.” Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 15-16.
® For a complete description of chroniclers used in this paper, see Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 347-353.
^ Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 17.
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