As the Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience continues to wow audiences around the world, we wanted to highlight composer Ben Moore’s Dear Theo song cycle based on letters of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, which received its world premiere recording with tenor Paul Appleby and pianist Brian Zeger (DE 3437), with a new playlist on Spotify! Read the letters below while you listen on Spotify:
Dear Theo
Based on letters of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo*
“In the song cycle Dear Theo, passages from Van Gogh’s letters (translated into English from the original French or Dutch) express deeply held feelings that Vincent shares with his brother, who was also his benefactor. The longing for freedom is ever-present: freedom from the financial constraints that burdened him and freedom from the many barriers that he believed hindered his expression. Vincent persevered in spite of his never having an inkling of how hugely popular and influential his work would become.”
—Ben Moore, Composer
The Red Vineyard
“Dear Theo… my brother… if only you had been there when I saw the red vineyard, all red like red wine. In the distance it turned to yellow, and then a green sky with the sun, and the earth after the rain, violet, sparkling yellow here and there where it caught the reflection of the setting sun.” (November 1888)
“Oh Theo, brother…I think that I must have a starry night with cypresses, in blue and yellow light, or surmounting a field of ripe corn…there are such wonderful nights here…I am in a continual fever of work! …I hope the weather is as fine in Paris as it is here. Write as soon as you can.
Ever yours, Vincent”
(April 1888)
Already Broken
“At times I feel already…broken, and what will come of it I do not know…my deepest hope remains the same, as you well know, brother, that I might be a lighter burden in your life…but I can see a time that’s just on the horizon, a time when you might show my pictures with no shame.” (Summer 1887)
“It’s true I’m often sick and troubled, but there is harmony inside of me. For in the poorest little hut I see a picture, and I believe that very soon you will be proud to show my work; you will be satisfied…you will have something for your sacrifices, brother.” (July 1882)
I Found a Woman
“I found a woman, not young, not beautiful. But oh, this woman, she had a charm for me. It’s not the first time I was unable to resist that feeling of affection, yes affection and love for these women, who are so damned and condemned. I do not condemn them… Would you think that I have never felt the need for love? We talked, about her life, about her cares, about her misery… about everything…” (December 1881)
Little One
“Often I think of your little one, Theo, and what he means to you now in your life. Surely it’s better to have a child than to expend all one’s vigor as I have. Often I think of him there in his cradle. But for myself, I’m too old, too old to desire something else. Yet often I think of your baby, your baby. Oh Theo, I’m hard at work and still I say it’s better by far to have a child. But, for myself, that desire was gone long ago. Long ago. Gone.” (Adapted from letter of July 1890)
The Man I Have to Paint
“I think of the man I have to paint. Terrible in the furnace of the full ardor of the harvest at the heart of the south. Hence the orange shades like storm flashes, vivid as red hot iron, and hence the luminoustones of the old gold in the shadows. Oh my dear boy, and the nice people will only see the exaggeration as caricature! …The only choice I have is between being a good painter and a bad one. I choose the first. But the needs of painting are like those of a ruinous mistress: you can do nothing without money. And you never have enough of it… If you should happen to send a little extra this month I would be most grateful.” (August 1888)
When I’m at work
“But when I’m at work I feel an unlimited faith in art and that I shall succeed… And when doubt overwhelms me I try to defeat it by setting to work once again…Poverty is at my back but I’m still at work. I’m still at work…Gauguin and I, our arguments are electric! …And when that delirium of mine shakes all I dearly love, I do not accept it as reality…I’m still at work. I’m still at work.”(from various letters)
Souvenir
“I must leave a souvenir, a souvenir that I might offer in the shape of something true, the shape of drawings and of pictures. I must leave a souvenir, a souvenir that might remain to say to those who care to see, to those with eyes who care to see that this man felt deeply… I know I’ll never do what I intended. Success requires a nature unlike mine. My strength has been depleted far too quickly, but for others, Theo, there is a chance. There is a chance for something more…
If only you had been there when I saw the red vineyard, all red like red wine…
There is a chance for something more. A souvenir that might remain to say to those who care to see that here was someone who felt deeply, brother, dear brother, dear Theo.” (adapted from letters of August 1883, November 1888 and September 1889)
*based on the first English translation of the letters published in The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Constable, 1927), a majority of which were translated by van Gogh’s sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh.