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mother tongue

just to start this off on the right foot let me point out that i really like going to la master chorale concerts. i’m really glad they tackle so much new music and i thought the concert was very well performed. i’m not sure why i’m so snippy about this gig, but here are my comments, take them with a grain of salt if you wish.

the organ cadenzas in james macmillan’s Magnificat sounded like the would work better for a chamber orchestra. this was the first of many cadenzas during the evening that went on too long. i figure if you are going to write one, they should either get the ‘essence’ of the instrument or illustrate the performers unique ‘personality’ these did neither. a cadenza is kind of like the circus train stopping in your neighborhood, either the elephants will do something cool or just crap on the side of the tracks.

i liked eve belgairan’s persian influenced composition (sang) much better than i thought i was going to. she wrote for the persian santur (72 string hammered dulcimer) and daf and tombek (persian percussion) as continuo instruments in a western style. so while i really enjoyed the performance i wounder what we would think of an brass quintet hired to play iranian folk songs? i know this work was presented to be a ‘cultural exchange’, but it feels a pretty colonial and imperialistic to me.

my anticipated ‘highlight’ of the evening was to finally hear arvo part’s te deum live. i have listened to the piece over the years and wondered if i would like it more live. i think its a primer in great writing for a chorus and strings, but have never been able to listen to it in one sitting. thursday’s performance was no different. disney hall makes a great frame for the piece. the sound of the aeolian harp (prerecorded) was amazing, but i found myself getting bored listening to his endless re-orchestrations of similar material.

the best thing is that this concert crystalized my thoughts about writing for chorus. so… what kind of conversation goes on for an two hours in a variety of assorted foriegn languages? sitting in the audience felt like a strange ritual listening to an evening of recently composed choral music without theater or narrative has to be some really fucking great art music or i can’t buy it. what does it say about composers (mcmillian and belgarian are british and american) who choose to write in a language in which the audience will not be able to follow along? i don’t get it, and it feels like a big dodge to not write in the mother tongue of our audience. this has always been a slow burn with me, and i’m not saying everything should be in english, but somewhere in the middle part’s te deum it was easy to see from the back of disney hall that we all were listening to very well orchestrated aesthetic experience in which the 120 member los angeles master chorale had much to sing about and nothing to say.

addendum, 061007

i don’t have anything inherently against ‘absolute’ vocal music. its just i think it all boils down to the presence or absence of a narrative structure. i think when you choose a text that is in another language/not recognizable then you must have other strategies to connect to your audience. if the purpose of art music is to reflect upon the human condition (at least its mine) then this night’s performance clearly illustrates why our audiences still have problems connecting to ‘new’ music.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 4:28 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with art music, composing, los angeles, performance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.