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Andrew P. MacDonald: Ode to the West Wind (TSO Commission/World première)

Andrew Paul MacDonald composed Ode to the West Wind in 2009. The work runs approximately 15 minutes in performance, and is scored for 3 flutes, piccolo, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and orchestral strings.

Andrew Paul MacDonald’s setting of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind for narrator and orchestra was completed in September of 2009. The poem is replete with musical imagery such as “thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow her clarion o'er the dreaming earth”, “dirge of the dying year” and “trumpet of a prophecy”. Some images are indeed symphonic in nature: “Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies will take from both a deep, autumnal tone”.

Shelley completed his Ode in the autumn of 1819 in Florence. Zephirus, the autumn wind he invokes, came upon him as he stood in the Arno forest near Florence. The poem evokes an ascent from death to life for the poet’s own fiery thoughts and, like Prometheus’ gift of fire, Shelley hopes that his free-thinking philosophy will enlighten and liberate humanity.

The five stanzas of the poem are set as individual movements which are played segue without pausing. The formal plan for each stanza is the sonnet sequence imposed on terza rima (rhyme: aba bcb cdc ded ee), in reference to Dante's transcendental vision. The opening three stanzas invoke the West Wind as a driving force over land, in the sky, and under the ocean, and beg it to listen. The last two stanzas shift from nature's forests to Shelley's own, where in longing to be the West Wind's lyre he becomes one with the forest and brings to a climax his commands: “Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!”, “Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!”, “Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!” and “Be through my lips to unawakened earth the trumpet of a prophecy!”

The closing line, one of the most famous in English literature, poses to this representative of the animate universe the simple question of cyclic rejuvenation: “O, Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Programme Note by Andrew Paul MacDonald

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