Helen Hopekirk: Sundown for piano (1905)

Sundown is one of the loveliest pieces of piano music written by the Scottish composer Helen Hopekirk (1856-1945). It was completed in 1905, whilst she was staying in Edinburgh. Not only is the music perfectly charming, but the dedication lends to the works interest.  The score is dedicated to a certain Florence Raeburn, who had been a fellow pupil at Leipzig studying with Carl Reineke. It appears that Raeburn was an active Suffragette in Edinburgh and well as promoting reading circles. She was also a society lady. 

The score of Sundown is headed with a quotation from the opening lines of William Ernest Henley’s (1849–1903) poem In Memoriam: Margaritae Sorori, which was dedicated to his sister-in-law, Margaret. I include the full text here for interest, as Hopekirk’s piano piece is a commentary on the entire poem. The subject matter presents a stoic acceptance of death.

A late lark twitters from the quiet skies:

And from the west,

Where the sun, his day’s work ended,

Lingers as in content,

There falls on the old, gray city

An influence luminous and serene,

A shining peace.

The smoke ascends

In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires

Shine and are changed. In the valley

Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,

Closing his benediction,

Sinks, and the darkening air

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night—

Night with her train of stars

And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!

My task accomplish’d and the long day done,

My wages taken, and in my heart

Some late lark singing,

Let me be gather’d to the quiet west,

The sundown splendid and serene,

Death.

It will be recalled that this text was used in Frederick Delius’s A Late Lark (1925) for tenor and orchestra. This work is “lovely, wistful and essentially Delius.”  Both Hopekirk and Delius reflect a sense of resignation towards death, rather than Dylan Thomas’s “Rage, rage against the dying of the light…”

Sundown is written in ternary form, with the opening and closing sections in F# major and the middle section in Gb major. The work begins Andante sostenuto and signed to be played “dreamily.”  It is characterised by large chords in filled octaves (R.H.) and triads (L.H.). This section is almost totally diatonic in its harmonies:

The opening phase is immediately repeated, almost exactly. The middle section explores more complex pianism. Here, Hopekirk is chromatic in her choice of chordal and melodic progressions:

The use of canonic effects between hands was a preferred device of her teacher Carl Reinecke and is used to good effect here. The final section repeats the opening phrase, in the original key, but this is extended by a repetition in a glorious D major followed by an extended coda which brings the piece to a serene conclusion.

Helen Hopekirk often used Scottish imagery and folk song in her compositions. Sundown does not reflect this, except possibly by extension. She has created a romanticised picture of sunset in the West, as a metaphor of final journey of Life. Perhaps there are some thoughts here mind about the Celtic Tír na nÓg or The Land of the Young, which can sometimes be glimpsed on the horizon beyond the Islands of the West.        

Critically, Dana Muller (1995) has stated that Sundown’s “extended harmonies and textures written on three staves, mimic Debussy's Estampes (published in 1903, two years before Sundown was composed).” This romantically charged piece is influenced by the American composer Edward MacDowell.

Helen Hopekirk’s Sundown was published by G. Schirmer, New York in 1909.

The liner notes provided for the only recording of this piece reminds the listener that the composer arranged Sundown both for piano trio and for full orchestra. This latter version was often played by the Boston Pops, the Cleveland Orchestra and the Burlington Symphony in Vermont. The piece remained one of Hopekirk’s most popular pieces and was also taken up by many of her pupils.

Philip Sear’s performance of Sundown can be heard on YouTube. A commercial recording can be heard on the only CD devoted to Helen Hopekirk’s music: Toccata Classics (TOCC 0430) played by Gary Steigerwalt. 

Bibliography:
Muller, Dana, Helen Hopekirk (1856–1945): Pianist, Composer, Pedagogue. A Biographical Study; a Thematic Catalogue of her Works for Piano; a Critical Edition of her Concertstück in D minor for Piano and Orchestra (dissertation, University of Hartford, 1995).