Bernard Hermann e la grande utopia di Moby Dick
E per gli ascoltatori il testo integrale della Cantata

La puntata del 29 giugno di New Music (quinto canale della Radio Vaticana alle 21.30 con replica alle 5.00 del 30 giugno) sarà interamente dedicata a Moby Dick, cantata di Bernard Herrmann. Il programma di Marco Di Battista vuole fare così un omaggio al compositore americano in occasione del centenario della nascita. Hermann (29/6/1911-24/12/1975) è molto conosciuto come autore di colonne sonore (a parte il lungo sodalizio con Alfred Hitchcock, per il quale ha realizzato le musiche per Psycho, L'uomo che sapeva troppo ecc., si possono ricordare Citizen Kane - Quarto Potere, Taxi Driver). In realtà la sua preparazione musicale è iniziata in maniera molto classica, pur rivelando grandi capacità compositive fin dall'adolescenza. In Moby Dick troviamo un grande rispetto per il dettato dell'originale di Herman Melville. Ci ritroviamo Ishmael, il sopravvissuto perché si possa raccontare l'accaduto, e il capitano Achab, nella sua visionaria lotta contro la balena bianca per la quale ha perso una gamba. Il curatore del programma, Marco Di Battista, appassionato lettore del libro di Melville, ha scelto di offrire solo un sottile filo rosso per ascoltare la cantata. Il testo infatti è sufficientemente intellegibile. Chi vuole, può ascoltare e seguire il testo qui di seguito per gentile concessione della Radio Danese. Il concerto infatti è stato registrato nell'ambito degli scambi della Unione Europea di Radiodiffusione.


Bernard Herrmann: Moby Dick
Testo: W. Clark Harrington da Herman Melville
Per gentile concessione della Radio Nazionale Danese

Male Chorus:
'And God created great whales'.

New Bedford; loomings

Ishmael:
Call me Ishmael.
Some years ago, –
never mind how long precisely, –
Having little or no money in my purse
And nothing to int'rest me on shore,
I thought I would sail about a little
And see the watery part of the world.
Whenever I find myself
growing grim about the mouth;
Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November
in my soul;
Then I account it high time to get to sea
as soon as I can.
And in the wild conceits
that swayed me to my purpose,
Two and two there floated into my inmost soul
Endless processions of the whale.
And in midmost of them all
One grand hooded phantom,
like a snow hill in the air!

Whaleman's Chapel; the hymn

Chorus:
The ribs and terrors in the whale,
Arched over me a dismal gloom.
While all of God's sunlit waves rolled by,
And lifted me deepening down the doom.

I saw the opening maw of hell,
With endless pain and sorrow there;
Which none but they that feel can tell –
Oh! I was plunging to despair.

In black distress I called to my God,
When I could scarce beleive him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints –
No more the whale did me confine.

With speed he flew to my relief,
As on a radiant dolphin borne;
Awful, yet bright, as lightining shone
The face of my Deliverer God.

My song for ever shall record
That terrible, that joyful hour;
I give the glory to my God.
His all the mercy and the pow'r. Amen.

Under weigh

Ishmael:
At last anchor was up, the sails were set,
And off we glided. The cold, damp
night breeze blew;
A screaming gull flew overhead. We plunged
like fate into the lone Atlantic.
It was not a great while after, that one
morning Captain Ahab ascended the cabin
gangway to the deck and called out:

Captain Ahab's exhortation

Ahab:
Send everyone aft; mastheads there! Come down!
What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?

Chorus:
Sing out for him!

Ahab:
Good! And what do ye do next, men?

Chorus:
Lower away, and after him!

Ahab:
And what tune is it ye pull to, men?

Chorus:
A dead whale or a stove boat!

Ahab:
Look ye! D'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?
D'ye see it?
Whosoever of ye raises me a white-headed whale
With a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw
Shall have this gold ounce.

Chorus:
Huzza! Huzza!

Harpooner:
Thar white whale must be the same
that some call Moby Dick!

Ahab:
Aye! Aye! I'll chase him 'round the Horn –
And round the Norway's Maelstrom
before I give him up.
And this is what ye have shipped for, men!
To chase that white whale on both sides of land,
And over all sides of earth, till he sprouts
black blood
And rolls fin out.
What say ye, men?

Chorus:
Aye! Aye! A sharp eye for the white whale;
A sharp lance for Moby Dick!

Ahab:
God bless ye, God bless ye, men.
Now, three to three ye stand.
Commend the murderous chalices!
Drink and swear, ye men that
man the deathful whaleboat's bow.
Death to Moby Dick!

Chorus:
Aye! Aye! Aye!

Sunset; Ahab meditating

Ahab:
Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's rim,
The warm wawes blush like wine.
The gold brow plumbs the blue.
The diver sun – slow dive from noon, –
goes down; my soul mounts up!
She wearies with her endless hill.
Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear?
This Iron Crown of Lombardy.
Yet it is bright with many a gem;
I, the wearer, see not its far flashings;
But darkly feel that I wear that,
That dazzlingly confounds,
'Tis iron – that I know – 'tis not gold.
'Tis split, too – that I feel;
The jagged edge galls me so,
My brain seems to beat against the solid metal;
Aye, steel skull, mine, the sort that needs
no helmet in the most brain-battering fight.
Dry heat on my brow? Oh! time was
When as the sunrise nobly spurred me,
So the sunset soothed. No more
This lovely light, it lights not me;
All loneliness is angiush to me,
Since I can ne'er enjoy.
Gifted with the high perception,
I lack the low enjoying power;
Damned, most subtly, and damned
most malignantly!
Damned in the midst of Paradise!
Good night – ... good night.

Midnight, forecastle. Sailors & harpooners

Voice:
Hist, boys! Let's have a jig!
Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy!
Hurrah with your tambourine!
Rig it! Dig it! Stig it! Quig it!
Make a pagoda of thyself! Break the jinglers!
A ring! A ring! Jig it, men!

Chorus:
Yeah!
Hip! Oh! Jolly is the gale,
And a joker is the whale,
A-flourishin' his tail, –
Such a funny, sporty, gamey, jesty,
hoky-poky lad is the Ocean.
Oh! The scud is all a-flying,
That's his flip only foamin';
When he stirs in the spicin', –
Such a funny, sporty, gamey, jesty,
hoky-poky lad is the Ocean.
Oh! thunder splits the ship,
But he only smacks his lips,
A-tastin' of this flip, –
Such a funny, sporty, gamey, jesty,
hoky-poky lad is the Ocean. Oh!

Chorus:
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Voice:
Hands by the halyards!
Stand by to reef topsails!
The squall! The squall! Jump my jollies!

Pip:
Oh! Thou big white God aloft there
somewhere in yon darkness,
have mercy on this black boy;
preserve him from all men
who feel no fear.

Equator: Pacific Ocean

Ishmael:
It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments
of air and sea
Were hardly separable in that
all-pervading azure;
Only, the pensive air was transparently
pure and soft
With a woman's look, and the robust
and man-like sea heaved with long, strong,
lingering swells,
As Samson's chest in his sleep.
Ahab leaned over the side and watched
How the shadow in the water sank and sank
to his gaze.
The more and the more that he strove to
pierce the profundity.
Ahab looked up, and said:

Ahab:
Oh, Starbuck! It is a mild, mild wind,
And a mild looking sky; and the air smells now,
As it blew from a far-away meadow;
They have been making hay under the slopes
of the Andes.
O Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping
among the newly mown hay.
Sleeping? ... Sleeping.
Aye, toil how we may, we all sleep at last
on the field.
Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness;
As last year's scythes flung down,
And left in the half-cut swaths – Starbuck!
Mastheads, – What do you see?

Sailor:
Nothing, nothing, sir.
Nothing, nothing at all.

The sighting of Moby Dick

There she blows! There she blows!
A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!

Ahab:
Forehead to forehead! I meet thee this time
Moby Dick!
Man the mastheads! Call all hands!
On deck there! Crowd her into
the wind's eye.
So, so; he travels fast and I must down.
Starbuck, some men die at ebb tide;
some at low water;
Some at the full of the flood; – and I fell now
Like a billow that's all one crested comb.
Starbuck, I am old; – shake hands with me, man.

Starbuck:
Oh! my captain, my captain! go not! go not!
See, it is a brave man that weeps.

Ahab:
Lower away! Stand by the crew!

Chorus:
The sharks! The sharks!

Starbuck:
Oh, master, my master, come back!

Ahab:
Drive, drive in your nails, oh, ye waves!
To their utmost heads drive them in!
Ye but strike a thing without a lid;
And no coffin and no hearse can be mine! –
And hemp can only kill me! Ha! Ha!

Starbuck:
Oh! Ahab, see! Moby Dick seeks thee not!
It is thou, thou that madly seekest him! ...

The onset

Ahab:
Oars! Oars! Burst in upon him!

Chorus:
The whale! The ship!

Starbuck:
Up helm! Up helm! The whale!

Chorus:
The jaw! The jaw!

Starbuck:
Oh, Ahab, Ahab! Lo, thy work!

Ahab:
I turn my body from the sun.
Oh, lonely death on lonely life!
Towards thee I roll, thou, all destroying whale;
To the last I grapple with thee;
From hell's heart I stab at thee;
For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

Chorus:
The whale! The jaws!

Ahab:
Sink all coffins and all hearses
to one common pool!
And since neither can be mine,
let me then tow to pieces,
When still chasing thee,
though tied to thee,
Thou damned whale!

Ahab's final thrust

Chorus:
(Screams)

Ishmael:
'And I only am escaped alone to tell thee'.