The Song Of Twilight

[Virgil Gardiner]

Thischarming and haunting piece by Japanese composer Yoshinao Nakada blends eastern and western culture in musical form. A spacious right hand melody is hung over the steady, almost hypnotic pulse of left hand chords.

Separate hands practice is crucial in this piece. You want to achieve a sense of the melody floating over the left hand chords, almost as if the two parts are not connected. Follow the fingering as given for the right hand to allow the smoothest, most serene finger legato, and be careful not to land too heavily with the thumb: there should be some tailing off of sound at the end of each phrase. To achieve a beautiful singing sound in the right hand, imagine the fingers are stuck to the keys all the time, and keep the hand and forearm light. (I encourage students to actually check for lightness before they play and to continue to check as they are playing.)

In bar 3 a little crescendo and diminuendo will help shape the repeated figures. The chord and harmony changes in the left hand should also be as smooth as possible: keep the movements very small. Although a pedal marking is given, do not be tempted to try pedalling this piece until the left hand chords are learnt properly.

At bar 9, the music modulates (changes key) into F-sharp minor, and the mood becomes more plaintive, with the right hand figures, now higher in the register, emphasising the twilight atmosphere. Be sure to note the pianissimo marking in the repeat.

Frances Wilson is a classically-trained pianist, piano teacher and writer on pianism and classical music. She holds Licentiate and Associate Diplomas (both with Distinction) in Piano Performance, and is now based in West Dorset where she teaches from her home in Portland

A Song at Twilight is a play in two acts by Nol Coward. It is one of a trio of plays collectively titled Suite in Three Keys, all of which are set in the same suite in a luxury hotel in Switzerland. The play depicts an elderly writer confronted by his former mistress with facts about his past life that he would prefer to forget.

The original idea for A Song at Twilight was inspired by Lord David Cecil's biography of Max Beerbohm, in which Cecil described Constance Collier's late-life visit to Beerbohm at his home in Italy. Coward said, "I thought how funny this was. There was Max's old flame coming to visit him, but so much more vital still than him that she totally exhausted him in seconds."[1] Coward developed this by making his author a closeted homosexual, whose relations with women have been mainly for camouflage. Many people took the character to be based on Somerset Maugham,[2] and Coward's stage make up was thought to underline the point by its "curious" resemblance to Maugham.[1]

The play was first produced at the Queen's Theatre, London on 14 April 1966, directed by Vivian Matalon.[2] Suite in Three Keys was planned by Coward as his theatrical swan song: "I would like to act once more before I fold my bedraggled wings."[1] Coward's previous play, Waiting in the Wings (1960), had not been a critical success, but the climate of opinion had changed in the intervening six years, and Coward's works had undergone a period of rediscovery and re-evaluation, which Coward called "Dad's Renaissance". This had begun with a successful revival of Private Lives at the Hampstead Theatre and continued with a new production of Hay Fever at the National Theatre.[1] His co-stars in A Song at Twilight were Lilli Palmer (Carlotta), Irene Worth (Hilde) and Sean Barrett (Felix).[3]

The play was revived in 1999 for Coward's centennial in a production at the Gielgud Theatre directed by Sheridan Morley. The cast included Vanessa Redgrave as Carlotta, Kika Markham as Hilde, Corin Redgrave as Hugo and Matthew Bose as Felix.[4] The play then went on a UK tour in 2009 (directed by Nikolai Foster, with Peter Egan as Hugo, Belinda Lang as Carlotta, Kerry Peers as Hilde and Daniel Bayle as Felix)[5] and another in 2019 (directed by Stephen Unwin, with Simon Callow as Hugo, Jane Asher as Carlotta, Jessica Turner as Hilde and Ash Rizi as Felix.)[6]

Hilde Latymer, Sir Hugo's former secretary and for nearly twenty years his wife, discusses literary business by telephone. Hugo joins her and displays signs of nervousness at the impending arrival of Carlotta. He explains to Hilde that his affair with Carlotta "lasted exactly two years and we parted in a blaze of mutual acrimony". He does not know why she now wishes to see him again after so many years.

Hilde returns. To Hugo's amazement she knows all about his affair with Perry, and she persuades Carlotta to return all the letters that Hugo wrote to him. Carlotta gives them to Hugo. In return, Hugo changes his mind about his letters to her, and gives his consent to their publication in her book. Hilde shows Carlotta out, and returns to find Hugo reading his old letters, "deeply moved... with a sigh [he] covers his eyes with a hand".

In his diary Coward wrote, "Well, the most incredible thing has happened. Not only has A Song at Twilight opened triumphantly, but the Press notices have on the whole been extremely good. Most particularly the Express and the Evening Standard. Fortunately the Sun struck a sour note... which convinced me that I hadn't entirely slipped."[8] The Times, noting the parallel with Maugham, praised both the play and the acting.[2] The critic of The Daily Mail said, "as the curtain fell last night I felt oddly elated, as if I had recaptured the flavour of an exclusive drink which one tasted when young but has never been mixed quite right since. I know the name of it now: not mannerism, not bravura, not histrionics, but style."[1]

Carter Burwell has composed the music for more than 80 films, including No Country for Old Men, The Blind Side, and Where the Wild Things Are (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), but it's a love story involving vampires that ended up being Burwell's most talked about project. We're talking, of course, about Twilight.

"Most of the films that I work on don't have that level of popularity," Burwell tells us. "I mean, I guess you could say pretty much all the films do not have that level of popularity. And also the appeal of the films that I do is to a completely different group." So, one could say he wasn't exactly prepared for the thousands of emails that overwhelmed his inbox after he wrote the instantly iconic (amongst Twihards) song, "Bella's Lullaby." Or that this song would become one that hundreds of teenagers would learn how to play on the piano. Burwell didn't expect a piece of instrumental music he composed to elicit a fangirl response, but then, weirder things have happened in Stephenie Meyer's world (like shimmering vampires and werewolves fighting for the love of a human, say).

In the Twilight universe, "Bella's Lullaby" is a song composed by Edward Cullen for Bella Swan. He often plays or hums it to her when she's falling asleep or has had a bad dream, but Burwell didn't create it with those motivations in mind. In fact, he'd already written it before he was even brought on to work on the film.

Ten years after the movie first premiered, Burwell still hears from fans, though not nearly as much as he used to. "I mean, it was a flood," he explains, but with the anniversary here, he might want to prepare his inbox again.

She sent me the script, and I knew nothing about the books at that point. I read the script, and I think my first reaction was that it didn't seem like my cup of tea [laughs]. You know, whether or not you think it's melodramatic, it's very romantic and completely sincere. There's no irony really in it. And it seemed like it would at least be very difficult for me, and I wasn't sure why Catherine was interested in me doing it. It seemed like other composers might be better. And she seemed to feel that I was wrong about this and that I was just a terrified person and she wanted to convince me, so she flew me out to Portland, Oregon, and showed me some of the footage and we talked about it some more. And she convinced me.

I knew a little of Kristen Stewart shortly before that. I don't know if Rob Pattinson had ever had a leading role, but she showed me some scenes that they had shot, and I could see that Catherine had gotten something special out of the actors. And she was certain that I would be able to bring something new to it. Something unexpected. And I have a lot of respect for Catherine as a director, so I decided to take her word for it.

[Laughs] Well, yes. The pressure only intensified over time. I don't think even some of the entertainment who were making the film really knew the depth of eagerness that this audience had for the film. I think the last book, I'm not sure when it came out, but it was around the time that we were making the film and the phenomenon was growing the entire time.

It hasn't changed for me, but, of course, it became something different. Something that's out of my hands and goes out into the world, it does become a bit different just in the sense that it now means something to all these other people, too. But for me, no it hasn't changed at all.

I think it's interesting because the soundtrack features everyone from Paramore to Linkin Park, yet this instrumental song is what really, to borrow a phrase from the book, "imprinted" on a bunch of teenagers. Did you expect it to resonate as much as it did?

I was surprised. It's not because I didn't think people would like that piece of music, but of all the films I had done, I had never gotten that direct response from fans. It's not typically like that being a film composer [laughs]. I'm very happy being sort of hidden from view and usually prefer to not even get involved in that relationship with these people I don't really know, I'm just a private person. But in the case of Twilight, there were so many e-mails, I mean thousands, from people who were mostly young and very sincere and they really wanted to know how to play "Bella's Lullaby" and things like that. I did try to answer them because I did feel like these people were serious and because the music means this thing to them.

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