Contemporary Classics February 13, 2018 Spiritual Journey

As always our opening theme music is from the work Nocturne by Kirsten Volness. 

Tonight we embark on a journey of spirituality.  This show was inspired by a  communication within an online Buddhist organization sharing a link to a performance of John Tavener’s “Wake Up ... And Die” for solo cello and orchestral cello section which we will be listening to later in this program as music which evokes spirituality.  But I wanted to reflect on a journey of spirituality that music takes me on and hence this show.

We begin our journey of spirituality with Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3,  Op. 36  Symphony of Sorrowful Songs for soprano and orchestra.  This work was composed between October and December 1976 and premièred on 4 April 1977.

Górecki’s Symphony No 3 is in 3 movements 1. Lento - Sostenuto tranquillo ma cantabile, 2. Lento e largo – Tranquilissimo,  3. Cantabile semplice

In the work a solo soprano sings Polish texts in each of the three movements. The first is a 15th-century Polish lament of Mary, mother of Jesus, the second a message written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during World War II, and the third a Silesian folk song of a mother searching for her son killed by the Germans in the Silesian uprisings. The first and third movements are written from the perspective of a parent who has lost a child, and the second movement from that of a child separated from a parent. Górecki maintained that the work is an evocation of the ties between mother and child. I am putting this work in spiritual terms, but in full disclosure this is approach which Górecki specifically dismissed as not at the core of the work.  I guess we will be in disagreement over this.

Teresa Erb, soprano and Baden-Baden Symphony Orchestra conducted by Werner Stiefel from the album Gorecki Symphony No. 3 - Adams Harmonielehre

John Tavener Wake Up ... And Die composed in 1996 is the inspiration for tonight’s program.

This work is for solo cello and orchestral cello section.  John Tavener wrote that while he was considering the relationship between spiritual awakening and normal life that if you wake up spiritually, then you will die to all that is not spiritual. 'Wake up...and Die' is a musical representation of a metaphysical paradox: spiritual awakening and rebirth as death to the worldly; physical death as an awakening to a higher spiritual realm.

After the meditative opening with the solo cello, the orchestral cellos join in the meditation, providing a platform, as it were, while the solo cello line takes on a much more reflective character. The solo cello always represents the individual mind obtain the spiritual.  Then, of a sudden, just before the end, the solo chant begins again, only to be cut off by a distant sentimental memory, the memory of "the blues", reminding us of ordinary human emotion. The very end suggests a waking up into a kind of peace. Here John Tavener’s Wake Up...and Die (for Solo Cello And Orchestral Cello Section) is performed by Yo-Yo Ma & Members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra cello section   David Zinman conducting   from the album  The Protecting Veil & Wake Up...and Die

On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams was commissioned by the NY Philharmonic and an anonymous prominent NYC family shortly after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and was premiered by New York Philharmonic on September 19, 2002 at Avery Fisher Hall of Lincoln Center. In an interview, the composer John Adams explained: "I want to avoid words like 'requiem' or 'memorial' when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn't share. If pressed, I'd probably call the piece a 'memory space.' It's a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. The link to a particular historical event – in this case to 9/11 – is there if you want to contemplate it. But I hope that the piece will summon human experience that goes beyond this particular event. Transmigration means 'the movement from one place to another' or 'the transition from one state of being to another.' But in this case I meant it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience." On the Transmigration of Souls was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music.  Here is a performance of On the Transmigration of Souls by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus conducted by  Robert Spano  from the album Transmigration          

We are closing this evening’s Journey of Spirtuality with Samuel Barber’s  Agnus Dei - Agnus Dei is a choral composition in one movement by and is an arrangement of his Adagio for Strings that dates from 1938, which of course was his orchestration of the second movement of his String Quartet Op 11 from 1936. In 1967, he set the Latin words of the liturgical Agnus Dei, a part of the Mass, for mixed chorus with optional organ or piano accompaniment.  Here we have it sung acapella by Atlanta Symphony Chorus conducted by Robert Spano from the album Transmigration.