The Kingdom of Bones (1983)

The Kingdom of Bones   |   (Страна Костей)                                   

The Kingdom of Bones dates from 1983, but was originally conceived some six years earlier when I first discussed with librettist Kim Ballard the idea of writing a piece in Russian that would address the issue of nuclear holocaust. During the first five of those years the text and overall design took shape, evolving into six sections entitled Nightfall, In the Forest, Lullaby (which consists of I.S. Nikitin’s poem The Nightingale’s Song Has Ceased in the Dark Thicket), Interlude, Dawn and Lament. These six sections follow one another without a break and relate the story of a mother (the role taken by the mezzo-soprano protagonist) who returns to her child, which she has left in the forest to keep it safe from the plague that has broken out in the towns and cities. She finds it and centres all her hopes and dreams on the child’s future. Confident that they are both safe, she sings it to sleep with a lullaby. An instrumental interlude then follows, building up gradually to the point where the woman suddenly wakes up and tells of a nightmare she has had in which her child dies. She then realises that in fact the child has died and sings a lament that culminates in a slightly adapted quotation from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – “We live as we dream and hope – alone”.

The music for The Kingdom of Bones was written between April and October 1983 and articulates a structural design that sometimes cuts across that provided by the text. This design creates sections that are marked by the use of bells which toll six at the beginning, gradually increasing with each recurrence to twelve by the middle of the lullaby. This section ends with one bell and then each time the bells recur the tolling increases back to six by the end of the piece. This not only outlines a hypothetical twelve-hour period, but also helps to define an overall binary structure – a journey to a central point and back again – which was inspired by the form of Hermann Hesse’s novel Narziss and Goldmund. In fact, the title The Kingdom of Bones is taken from a line in Hesse’s work and refers to the plague-ridden land through which Goldmund travels. I was more concerned however, with the plague as a possible symbol for the effects of a nuclear holocaust, something suggested by a theatrical adaptation I once saw of Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. The use of the Russian language was due partly by the desire to evoke the late vocal works of Shostakovich, but also because the dark sound quality of the language both matches and reinforces that of the music.

The Kingdom of Bones was commissioned by Northern Music Theatre with funds from Yorkshire Arts.  It was premiered by that ensemble conducted by Graham Treacher with Linda Hirst mezzo-soprano at the Huddersfield Festival on 22 November 1983.

Philip Grange