Built in 1766, St. Paul's Chapel is New York's only surviving pre-Revolutionary church and the oldest public building in continuous use in New York City. It is a place where George Washington worshiped and 9/11 recovery workers received round-the-clock care.
[Website for St. Paul's Chapel]It had been a long day, but I was still eager to attend a concert at St. Paul's Chapel in the evening. My day began with preparation for a special service at the church I have been attending. I was subbing for the regular organist/pianist/choir director who has been recovering from eye surgery. The service was a celebration of 25 years of ministry of the current minister. Under normal circumstances I would feel some anxiety and tension as while the music was not difficult, there was lots of it, and the service was expanded and altered in several ways. It all went well and I hope my contributions were positive and meaningful.
I relaxed as much as I could during the afternoon so that I could muster the energy to go into Manhattan for the concert.
Although I arrived at the church early, the main seating area was already full and so I made my way up to a balcony where, unfortunately, sight lines were restricted (note to 18th century church architects!). It was also quite warm up in the balcony.
The opening of the concert was two movements from Bright Mass with Canons by Nico Muhly, a young composer who has received lots of favorable critical "buzz." The reverential tone of the work was heightened by the visual effect of the choir (surrounding the organ in the rear balcony) holding candles (electric). In the two movements performed ("Gloria" and "Sanctus") the interplay between the choir and the organ was lively without being disruptive or disjointed. The pure voices of The Trinity Choir resonated in the acoustically live chapel. I got a clear sense of Mr. Muhly's music that would be reaffirmed in other works on the program.
After the reverential pieces of Mr. Muhly, the series of pieces by Missy Mazzoli (A Thousand Tongues, Orizzonte, Like a Miracle, and Tooth and Nail) for viola, electronic sounds and video provided a more dramatic and quite varied change of pace. Though the works were certainly attention grabbing, there was, for me, some uncertainty as to when one work ended and another began, even though the video images changed their "themes." I did not always get the connection between the sounds and the video images. All in all, I found the images to be more absorbing than the music although the viola performance by Nadia Sirota was stunning.
Once more, the program turned to the choral music of Mr. Muhly. The Sweets of Evening for choir with piano accompaniment reflected for me a mixture of 16th-century English polyphonic music (think William Byrd) with influences of such recent composers as Philip Glass and Terry Riley. The same holds true for Pater Noster, where a projected image of what appeared to be an image based on 9/11 added a sense of grief and anxiety to the work at this performance. The fact that the chapel is so close to the WTC site also added to the special feeling this performance conveyed.
It was quite warm in the balcony and I was feeling tired, but an extended intermission, where the audience was allowed to go outside for some air, rejuvenated me. It was a truly beautiful evening. Following the intermission I was able to get a seat on the main floor of the chapel.
I was rewarded for my tenacity with a wonderful performance of House of Solitude: A Poet's Labyrinth, a work that through sound and image conveys the need on the part of the restless, imaginative poet for solitude. Paola Prestini's music and Carmen Cordas's video design mesh perfectly. Both reflect a neo-Baroque sense of larger-than-life, full-of-artifice, and virtuoso exuberance. The constantly morphing and transforming images often have a surreal element.
Inspired by the writings of German poet Friedrich Holderlin (1779-1843), House of Solitude hovers between the poles of the essential human predicament: frailty and folly on the one hand, and the inaccessibility of God on the other. This tension throws the poet back into nature as inspiration and solitude as the context of Prestini’s piece embraces the cutting-edge technology of the K-Bow, an invention by famed instrument designer (and ZETA inventor) Keith McMillan, which Dufallo has endorsed. It is a hand-crafted composite sensor bow which empowers the string player by harnessing software tools to seamlessly realize another level of freedom and creativity without interrupting performance, such as triggering vocal samples and film clips. House of Solitude places the violinist as the poet in the labyrinth of life.
[ House of Solitude website ]
The concert closed with a final choral piece by Mr. Muhly, I Cannot Attain Unto It. Although the same focus on 16th-century polyphonic choral sounds along with hypnotic and minimalistic repetition of other choral works heard previously can be found here, there is also more tension and angst, doubtless reflecting the text:
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
- Psalm 139, 6-8
And so, the concert moved between points of serenity and points of tension and drama. The performances were uniformly first-rate and captivating. The video imagery was also exceptional with special kudos to House of Solitude.
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