"Drivel They Paid to Hear"

Well! The English critics minced no words about “Façade” when they first heard it in 1923. Not one recognized that it would become one of the great works of the 20th century.

Heard @ Moravian, the versatile faculty chamber ensemble, offers a rare opportunity to hear “Façade,” which comprises poems of Dame Edith Sitwell set to music by Sir William Walton (though both had yet to be ennobled at the time this work was written).

“Façade” is a clever homage to Dada, the nonsense art and language invented in France just a few years earlier by Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, and their friends. Sitwell’s poems are very close in style to the next-to-nonsense works of Gertrude Stein. Her brother Osbert thought her experiments in rhythm and sound might benefit from musical accompaniment, so they enlisted the aid of 19-year-old Walton, who was, at the time, their lodger.

Jim Barnes conducts an ensemble that includes Patricia Budlong Koch and Gregory Oaten, reciters; Robin Kani, flute; Deborah Andrus, clarinet; Neil Wetzel, saxophone; Larry Wright, trumpet; Audrey Simons, cello; and Steven Mathiesen, percussion.

4:00 p.m. Sunday, October 16, Foy Hall. $12; $6 students/seniors. Ext. 1650.