CLASSICAL CONNECTIONS LISTENER S GUIDE. Mozart. Sleeping. Giant

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1 CLASSICAL CONNECTIONS LISTENER S GUIDE Mozart & Sleeping Giant

2 This is exciting! That s how I began the Listener s Guide for the closing concert of last season s Classical Connections series. The subject was one of the fruits of our three-year Music Alive residency with composer Stella Sung, her one-act opera The Book Collector. It was a spine-chilling, mind-blowing end to the DPAA s Schuster Center season. I m reusing those This is exciting! words because (a) we ll be exploring the fruits of another Music Alive residency and (b) it s gonna be exciting. WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART FRANZ SÜSSMAYR In June the five organizations participating in Music Alive (the Seattle Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Pacific Symphony, the Albany Symphony, and the DPAA) met in Cleveland. We shared experiences from the first year of the project, discussed future plans, and did the networking thing. SLEEPING GIANT One idea in particular captured my imagination. Sleeping Giant, the sixcomposer team working with the Albany Symphony, was planning their own postmodern take on Mozart s Requiem. They were keeping everything that Mozart actually wrote, but the rest was up for grabs. Some of the music filled in by Mozart s friend Franz Süssmayr would stay, but they d complete the rest of the piece in their own way. Sounds crazy, right? But we had a fabulous experience in 2006 when we commissioned composer Robert Xavier Rodríguez to complete Mozart s other great unfinished masterpiece, the Mass in C Minor, so the Sleeping Giant plan for the Requiem sounded intriguing to me. After Albany premiered the piece in April 2015, the Sleeping Giants sent me a copy of the score and a recording of the performance. It was really cool, a beautiful and haunting mix combining the old music we know and love with incredible, moving, modern-day stuff. I thought, We gotta bring this to Dayton! Today we do.

3 A Requiem Revisited by Neal Gittleman Amadeus. The Miloš Forman movie of the Peter Shaffer play. About two hours in. An obviously sick Mozart is seated at a table, drinking and composing. Judging from the soundtrack, he s writing his Piano Concerto in D Minor. Suddenly there s a knock on the door. Mozart opens it and there s a mysterious masked man dressed all in black. Herr Mozart, I have come to commission work from you, says the scary guy. What work? asks the spooked composer. A mass for the dead. What dead? Who is dead? A man who deserved a requiem mass and never got one. So begins the saga of the Mozart Requiem. Not really! A few minutes later in Amadeus, Salieri, seen years in the future, confesses that he was behind this scheme: commissioning an under-thetable requiem from Mozart that Salieri would perform at Mozart s funeral and present as his own composition. Never happened. Not that way, at least. Mozart did get a commission for a requiem mass, from Count Walsegg- Stuppach. The commission was a secret (but not so secret that modernday musicologists couldn t figure it out). The count did plan to claim the work as his own. That s all true. The rest of the Requiem story in Amadeus comes from Peter Shaffer s vivid imagination! Mozart worked on the Requiem between July and November 1791 and died in December with the score less than half-finished. Mozart s widow, Constanze, then engaged his friend Franz Süssmayr to fill in the missing parts so that Count Walsegg could get his piece and Constanze could receive the final payment. Süssmayr s completion is one-third all-mozart, one-third Mozart with Süssmayr filling in what was missing, and one-third all-süssmayr (perhaps based on some sketches Mozart left behind at his death). For the final section (Communio), where Mozart had written nothing at all, Süssmayr reprised the music of the first two movements (100% Mozart) with different words. A kludge of an ending, perhaps, but better than an ending that s 0% Mozart! The Süssmayr-completed edition is now the standard version of the Requiem, although many critics and musicologists rail at things Süssmayr did. But Süssmayr s version isn t the only one. Several modern editors have reworked the Süssmayr completion in an attempt to fix things they found

4 lacking, particularly details in the orchestration. All these modern editions are designed to sound like Mozart. But Sleeping Giant had a different idea! Instead of a Mozart Requiem that tries to sound as if Mozart wrote it all, Messrs. Andres, Cerrone, Cooper, Hearne, Honstein, and Norman (see why it s easier to just call them Sleeping Giant?) went in a completely different direction. What if you filled in the missing parts with new music, so it s clear where the Mozart ends and the non-mozart begins? What if you did a musical equivalent to I.M. Pei s glass pavilion for the Louvre or Norman Foster s Hearst Tower in New York City modern-day add-ons to classic old buildings? You d end up with something really cool! Here are a few of the really cool results of the Sleeping Giants mixing Mozart s late 18thcentury style with their early 21st-century style... Ted Hearne: Introit[Us] Ted Hearne s opening movement is perhaps the most radical of all. You TED HEARNE won t hear any of Mozart s Introitus. (Later you ll hear Mozart s music in the Lux Aeterna section at the end of the Requiem.) Instead, this is an entirely new piece of music based on some imaginative wordplay. The Introitus of the Requiem liturgy is sung as the clergy enters at the beginning of the Mass for the Dead. ( Introitus is Latin for entrance.) Hearne takes the word literally. At the beginning of the piece the entire orchestra is offstage except for one trombone player. Instead of the clergy entering during the first movement, it s the orchestra (and conductor) who enter! The word introitus also suggests the English word introduce, hence Ted s Introit[Us] title. The movement literally introduces the musicians of the orchestra. By name. You ll hear the soloists and chorus sing the names of the musicians one by one as they enter and begin to play. The music is all contemporary, although once the chorus starts singing the names of the string players, you ll start to hear musical figurations and harmonies borrowed from Mozart s Introitus.

5 It s a wonderful, imaginative idea, although I wonder if Ted Hearne really thought it through. He wrote this movement for the Albany Symphony, so he used their names. If he wants other orchestras to play the piece (which he surely does), he ll have to revise the Introit[Us] for every performance! We ve sent Ted the roster of musicians scheduled to play ours, and he s cheerfully rewritten the piece so it really is Introit-US! Christopher Cerrone: Confutatis Another great (and imaginary) scene from Amadeus: Mozart, on his deathbed, dictates the Confutatis to Salieri. The Confutatis is an amazing movement, alternating powerful, angry music ( the cursed have been rebuked and sentenced to acrid flames ) with a serene, floating melody ( call me with the blessed ). Mozart s opening music is chaotic in a late 18th-century sort of way. To that, Chris has added some 21st-century chaos: wild, CHRISTOPHER CERRONE improvisatory gestures from solo strings and clarinets with the choir sometimes singing, sometimes contributing indecipherable fast whispering! You hear the familiar Mozart- Süssmayr music through a hazy static of confusing modern sounds. Timo Andres: Lacrimosa Fugue The Lacrimosa is the final section of the Requiem s Dies Irae sequence. It ends with the word Amen. But Mozart never got to the Amen. There are only two bars of the strings accompaniment figure plus the chorus s first six TIMO ANDRES bars. Everything else in the movement was by Süssmayr, who continued along the lines that Mozart had begun. For the Amen, Mozart likely would have written an elaborate Amen fugue. Rather than guess what Mozart might have done, Süssmayr took a humbler route and wrote a plain vanilla Amen like what you hear at the end of most hymns. Alas, that means that the end of the Dies Irae sequence is a bit of a letdown.

6 Not in Sleeping Giant s version! Timo Andres keeps Süssmayr s simple Amen but then segues into a beautiful, slow instrumental fugue based on fragments taken from the Lacrimosa music that Mozart did write. Wolfgang s spirit shines through, even as Timo s harmonies and sonorities go to places Mozart never imagined and build to a powerful finish. Robert Honstein: Quam Olim Abrahae The Offertorium section of the Requiem is in four parts: (1) Domine Jesu Christe, Rex Gloriae (Lord Jesus Christ, King of Glory), (2) Quam Olim Abrahae Promisisti (As Was Promised to Abraham), (3) Hostias et Preces Tibi Domine (We Offer You Sacrifices and Prayers, Lord), (4) an exact repeat of the Quam Olim Abrahae section, a vigorous fugue in which Mozart wrote all the choral parts and Süssmayr filled in the rest. Sleeping Giant leaves the first three sections alone, but then Robert Honstein goes to town on the repeat of ROBERT HONSTEIN JACOB COOPER Mozart and Süssmayr s fugue. Many modernday composers enjoy messing with our sense of time. As the chorus and orchestra perform the repeat of Mozart s fast and energetic Quam Olim Abrahae fugue, the performers gradually change to a glacially slow rendition of the fugue s last five bars. In Robert s own words, The slowed-down music is a memory of music we ve already heard, but it s barely recognizable. The long drawn-out chords become a massive wall of sound, swallowing the Mozart whole and leaving the audience in a suspended space, familiar but strange. As the piece subsides to its conclusion, members of the orchestra, one by one, begin playing Jacob Cooper s gently pulsating Sanctus movement. This creates a long, slow cross-fade, longer and slower than any DJ can pull off! Jacob Cooper: Sanctus Mozart composed absolutely no music for the Sanctus section of the Requiem. The music we re used to

7 hearing at this point in the Mozart Requiem is all by Franz Süssmayr. Here, for the Sleeping Giant composers, anything goes! Here s Jacob Cooper describing what he did for the Sanctus movement: All of the standard Sanctus text is distilled to the opening word, and all harmony is telescoped to the D-major sonority that opens Mozart s movement. Time suspends, a listener reflects. Cooper s Sanctus is perhaps the most radical section of the Sleeping Giant Requiem. It s certainly the furthest in sound from what we re accustomed to hearing: about 10 minutes of a gently undulating, slowly shifting D-major sonority. Along the way, lots of unusual things happen: improvised musical gestures; bassoon players buzzing long, slow glissandos with their reeds; trombonists using flap tongue technique, which creates percussive, popping sounds; choristers slowly sliding from one note to the next. The result is a glowing swirl of sound. And what does all that have to do with the ancient liturgical text, Holy, holy ANDREW NORMAN holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory!? Perhaps a great deal! Andrew Norman: Communio For his Cum Sancto Spiritu finale, Süssmayr set the liturgically correct words to a note-for-note reprise of the all-mozart Kyrie movement. Andrew Norman starts his Cum Sancto Spiritu the same way, except for the trombones, who are silent in Mozart s Kyrie. Andrew has them gently blow air through their horns no pitch, just the sound of their breath, slightly amplified by the bells of their instruments. Then the bassoons and clarinets start doing the same thing. And gradually the strings stop playing Mozart s notes and begin to move their bows in such a way as to create a breathy air-sound, too. Finally the choir begins to audibly inhale and exhale, and Mozart s Requiem evaporates into the sound of the entire ensemble breathing as one. And then silence. See, I told you it was cool!

8 What the Heck s a Sleeping Giant, Anyway? SLEEPING GIANT Simple answer: Sleeping Giant is a collective of six composers who have separate careers but come together from time to time to do projects together. Let s have them tell us a bit more about how this works and about their unique take on the Mozart Requiem... Timo Andres on Sleeping Giant: Sleeping Giant formed more as a group of friends than as a professional endeavor. We d all either just moved or were planning on moving to New York after grad school, and realized we missed the day-to-day exchange of ideas, advice, and camaraderie we d come to rely on. So we thought banding together to present concerts of our music might be a nice continuation of that. After a couple of years, we decided that the concert format we d been presenting a piece from each of us, but without any common thread between them resulted in slightly unsatisfying evenings of music. We wanted to challenge ourselves to create something unified together, starting from the ground up. Ted Hearne on finishing the Mozart Requiem: Most intriguing to me was how through the ritual of performance over 200 years, or through the grandiosity of the Classical tradition, the reception of the work may have become totally separated from the experience of an individual confronting death. Could an irreverent jolt of the material, by us lowly contemporary composers, somehow channel the grossness or sadness or mundanity we feel when we are around those who are dying? That was the type of question I was asking while undertaking this project. Robert Honstein on working with Mozart s austere instrumentation: Standard orchestra sounds like standard orchestra. The limited orchestration of Mozart s Requiem guarantees a certain novelty and I liked that. I felt like I automatically had a slightly unusual orchestral sound built into the piece before I even had to write a note. Timo Andres on revisiting (and perhaps revising) their score before its second performance, here in Dayton: Because of the level of detail, there are always little things you want to change after the premiere. We discussed ideas for specific revisions as a group. It was a bit brutal, actually, to have a group of composers suggesting that you revise your own piece! But that s why we got into this thing together after all. We all trust each other s musical instincts.

9 TIMELINE ~ Sleeping Giant World Events 1979 USSR invades Afghanistan. Hostage crisis in Tehran Zimbabwe independence. Ronald Reagan elected 40th U.S. President Falkland Islands War. USA Today. First CD player sold in Japan USSR withdraws from Afghanistan. Berlin Wall falls Bill Clinton becomes 42nd U.S. President. Hubble Telescope repair Good Friday peace treaty in Northern Ireland. France wins World Cup /11 attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and DC. Dale Earnhardt dies at Daytona 500. Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years of repairs. Diamondbacks beat Yankees in World Series Game iphone. Wii. Nancy Pelosi is first woman Speaker of the House. The Simpsons movie Barack Obama becomes 44th U.S. President. Sully lands on the Hudson BP oil spill in Gulf of Mexico. Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Brett Favre s consecutive game streak ends Don t Ask, Don t Tell policy repealed. Earthquake and tsunami in Japan Curiosity rover lands on Mars. Queen Elizabeth s Diamond Jubilee. Timo Andres 1985 Born in Palo Alto, CA First musical composition Studies composition at Yale School of Music Writes piano piece It takes a long time to become a good composer, inspired by piano works of Robert Schumann. Christopher Cerrone 1984 Born in Huntington, NY First piano lessons Composition studies at Yale Boston Marathon bombing. Snowden reveals NSA surveillance. Ebola epidemic in Africa. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears. Putin annexes Crimea. Even-numbered year, so the Giants win the World Series Dawn spacecraft orbits asteroid Ceres. First gravitational waves observed UK votes for Brexit. U.S. votes for Trump. Cavs and Cubs beat their jinxes. Captain America edges Rogue One for top-grossing movie. Composes Fugue & Emphatic Plagal Cadence to complete the Lacrimosa movement of Mozart s Requiem Awarded the Glenn Gould Protégé Prize by the City of Toronto Opera Invisible Cities premieres at Union Station in Los Angeles. Composes Recordare and Confutatis movements for Mozart s Requiem. Finalist for Pulitzer Prize Wins the Rome Prize in Musical Composition.

10 Jacob Cooper 1980 Born in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. Ted Hearne 1982 Born in Chicago. Robert Honstein 1980 Born in Syracuse, NY. Andrew Norman 1979 Born in Grand Rapids, MI Begins trumpet lessons Begins composition studies at Yale School of Music First composition First composition Wins ASCAP Award for young composers Creates Commencer une autre mort, a six-minute video inspired by the climax of Bizet s opera Carmen Writes Katrina Ballads for singers and 11 instruments about Hurricane Katrina Wins Amsterdam s Gaudeamus Prize for a performance of movements from Katrina Ballads Composition studies at Yale School of Music Writes Night Scenes from the Ospedale (The DPO will play it in June 2018!) Graduates from Yale School of Music Finalist for Pulitzer Prize for The Companion Guide to Rome. Composes Sanctus movement for Mozart s Requiem Receives a commissioning grant from Chamber Music America. Composes Introit[Us] for Mozart s Requiem and The Source, an oratorio about Chelsea Manning The Source CD released on New Amsterdam Records. Composes Quam olim Abrahae and Agnus Dei movements for Mozart s Requiem Night Scenes CD released by Soundspell Productions. Composes Communio movement for Mozart s Requiem Named Musical America s Composer of the Year. Wins Grawemeyer Award.