Some (after)thoughts on Arnold van Wyk’s Ricordanza (1984)

Abstract

This article was written in response to Matildie Thom Wium’s thorough sketch studies of Arnold van Wyk's Ricordanza (1984), which  convincingly support her understanding of the work as a remembrance of the young Marthinus Cloete Basson, who later became a  celebrated director in the field of drama and theatre arts (Thom Wium 2008). Her reading of the work is further validated by inscriptions  in van Wyk’s diary: the first made on 12 November 1973 that ‘MCB’ visited his home that night with friends after a concert (Thom Wium  2008; Muller 2014, 601); the second on 3 December 1973, verifying that Van Wyk made the first sketch for Ricordanza that day, ‘a black  meditation on the D major prelude which MCB had played a little bit that night on the piano’ (Muller 2014, 601; Thom Wium 2008). The  aim of my contribution to this discourse is, through personal recollection and observational musical analysis as proposed by Michael Puri (2017; 2011), to trace compositional influences in Ricordanza that may shape complementary understandings of its meaning and nature. I  base my observations on compositional stimuli of which the composer made me aware during a series of visits to his home during the  period 1973- 81, and materials included in his lectures at the time. I then speculatively interpret these as an additional collection of  compositional ‘genealogies’ to Ricordanza, opening the potentiality of musically inspired ‘narratives’ that may pertain to a further  understanding of the work and its unique stylistic orientation.