Inspirations Behind Jake Heggie’s Statuesque

American composer Jake Heggie (b. 1961) looked at the statues of five women and wrote his song cycle Statuesque in their honour. He worked with Gene Scheer, an American songwriter, librettist, and lyricist who had created other song cycles with him, to explore their human backstories. Each statue ‘yearns for clarity and connection’ and focuses on its unique position. Heggie set the work for mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, violin, cello, double bass, and piano.

Jake Heggie (Photo by James Niebuhr)

He starts with one of Henry Moore’s rare wooden sculptures (the artist mainly works in stone). The reclining nude was one of Moore’s favourite subjects, using the mythological tale of woman being moulded from earth to create his reclining beauties whose ‘curves and cavities’ become a metaphor for the rolling hills of earth.

Henry Moore: Reclining Figure, 1939 (Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA))

The statue muses not about her figure but about the shadows that fill her.

Jake Heggie: Statuesque – No. 1. Henry Moore: Reclining Figure in Elmwood (Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano)

Having stopped sculpture in the 1910s, Pablo Picasso resumed work in the early 1930s. From his new château outside Paris, Boisgeloup, Picasso began sculpting again. His companion at the time, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was the source for this 1932 work. They met in 1927 when she was 17 and remained together until 1940.

Pablo Picasso: Head of a Woman, 1932 (New York: Museum of Modern Art)

Marie-Thérèse Walter

The song is a dialogue between the artist and his model – he has fallen in love with her face, and she’s never heard of him, but rather like his tie and he was charming. The final line, which answers the question posed all the way through the song, is NO. The question was ‘Can you keep a secret?’.

Jake Heggie: Statuesque – No. 2. Pablo Picasso: Head of a Woman, 1932 (Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano)

Created by an unknown sculptor centuries ago, the statue of Hatshepsut (ca 1507–1458) depicts the Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Thutmose II. First ruling as regent for her stepson, Thutmose III, who ascended to the throne at age 2, she took the title of Pharaoh from ca 1479–1458 BC until her co-ruling stepson ousted her. Historically, she was the first ruling woman about whom we have real information.

Hatshepsut, ca 1479–1758 BC (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The song focuses on the ‘Divine Potter’ who created this statue (we’ll ignore the fact that it was carved out of limestone), and how, as Hatshepsut moves between ‘what I was and what I shall be’, she will become the divine potter (lower case) herself.

Jake Heggie: Statuesque – No. 3. Hatshepsut: The Divine Potter (Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano)

The Swiss sculptor Albert Giacometti was known for his elongated sculptures. Although his first sculptures were very small, with a maximum height of 7 cm (2.75 in), his later works were elongated and very thin. He married Annette Arm in 1946, and from then on, she was his principal female model. His later sculptures were often nearly 3 meters in height. The Giacometti Standing Woman Heggie used as inspiration is 166 x 16.5 x 34.2 cm (65 3/8 x 6 1/2 x 13 1/2″).

Alberto Giacometti: Standing Woman, 1948 (New York: Museum of Modern Art)

In the music, the sculpture regrets the loss of her features, but praises the artist for depicting her as a woman from all time and that the beauty of her spirit remains.

Jake Heggie: Statuesque – No. 4. Alberto Giacometti: Standing Woman, 1948 (Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano)

She stands atop a staircase at the Louvre, giving a silent call to the following warriors. It is Nike, the daughter of Styx and the Titan Pallas, and the sister of similar personifications: Zelus, Kratos, and Bia (i.e., Rivalry, Strength, and Force). She represents Victory and leads those who follow to triumph.

The statue was discovered in 1863 on the Greek island of Samothrace. The majority of the body is complete, the bust was separated, and only one of her wings remained. It was later determined that she was actually standing on the bow of a warship, and this was added to the plinth. When she was put up in the Louvre, they added some parts that were missing to connect the bust with the body, added a metal brace to support the left wing, and recreated the entire right wing. They did not, however, attempt to recreate her head, arms, or feet.

Winged Victory of Samothrace, ca 200–190 BC (Paris: Louvre Museum)

Architect Aloïs Hauser and ancient-sculpture scholar Otto Bennedorf used the remaining parts of the statue and images of Nike from coins of the era to recreate what they believed the original statue looked like.

Model of the complete statue, after Bennedorf and Hauser, 1880

In the song, Nike/Victory fulminates at her hapless position, stuck as an exhibition before uninterested eyes. Why don’t they try to figure out what she’s thinking or dreaming? Why do they just look at her? And, she has particular revulsion for those who look at her with demanding eyes, noticing her skin beneath the revealing fabric, her wings impatient to bear her elsewhere, as they ‘yearn’, pondering ‘All of the possibilities of a moist, angelic nike’, yet not noticing that she’s lost her head. She tells them all to be off.

Jake Heggie: Statuesque – No. 5. Winged Victory: We’re Through (Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Jake Heggie, piano)

Between Gene Sheer’s lyrics and Jake Heggie’s music, we are given the inner thoughts of sculptures that we might have only passively regarded before. They cause us to rethink what the voids in Henry Moore’s women might be about, what anger might be hidden in Picasso’s head of his lover, how passive Hatshepsut’s role might be and how powerful her future role could be, the volcanic stripping away of all that is external in Giacometti’s woman yet maintaining the inner beauty, and, finally the anger of a woman who has been objectified since her creation. In some ways, it’s Nike’s anger that’s so revealing. She is well-aware of how she looks and what she was created for and despairs at the unthinking hordes who approach her, doing their Louvre checklist (Mona Lisa – check, Venus de Milo – check, Winged Victory – check – OK, we can leave now…).

By choosing to depict women from the beginning to the mid–20th century, Heggie has opened the possibilities of creating music that also covers a span of time in its style. Some seem like they come from the very roots of music, others are Impressionist, others are dance-like, up through the very Weill-like song of Winged Victory.

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