Ravinia_2018_Issue_7_Week

“To grotesquely simpli ,

SSO

kind of a

gure of the Renaissance.

, yet, at

the same time, sacred.”

– PETER SELLARS

to all of the other movements, or boost-

ed in three groups. Sometimes it’s two

and ve, sometimes each going in its

own pace as the music does. It’s a great

way for an audience to have a visual key

to the musical counterpoint.”

“What I was able to do working

closely with Grant,” Sellars adds,

“is create a kind of sculptural

sound. In a standard concert of

Renaissance polyphony, everyone

is facing the same way. What

you can do as soon as you start

turning people in space is—the

voices are in motion, and the

whole space comes alive with

these harmonic convergences

and dissonances and surprising

shi s of color and emotion. To

really hear that as a moving,

living experience is quite incred-

ible. And we’re able to prepare a

kind of tonal shi with physical

shi s of orientation. at is quite

amazing.

“As soon as you start asking

what are the pictures Orlando

is working with—and like Bach,

he was a completely pictorial

composer—you realize this music

is actually painting pictures. And

you can make those pictures

with the human beings on stage.

It’s an astounding experience.

Music that could be heard as

kind of wallpaper, which is how

most of the existing recordings

sound—they are perfectly nice,

but not that gripping. But if you

have an actual vivid sense of what

the imagery is, then also musi-

cally you suddenly have a set of

amazing choices that have not

been made before. It’s kind of a

breakthrough.”

e breakthrough is not only

musical, as Sellars sees it, but

spiritual.

“To grotesquely simplify,” explains

Sellars, “the two great composers of the

Renaissance are Palestrina and Lasso.

Palestrina is the music of perfection. It’s

everything’s in place, gleaming, shining,

heavenly. Whereas Orlando di Lasso is

totally addicted to drugs. He’s a mess.

He’s a wreck. He’s a ruin. He’s kind of a

Bob Dylan gure of the Renaissance. A

total mess, yet, at the same time, sacred.

It’s the contrite and broken, shattered

spirit whom God is fond of, and that’s

what this piece is about. Lasso’s music

has this truly messed-up sound of some-

body who’s made wrong choices. And

for the shocking, broken harmonies

and these painful, painful chords which

you can feel the shame and self-hatred

burning through these chords, you can

feel the sense of, ‘I was wrong. I did the

wrong thing, and I still am doing the

wrong thing. And I don’t know how to

stop.’

“ at kind of pain and hurt and

damage is inside this deep musical

language: the idea that Peter made a big

mistake. When the cops came to arrest

Jesus, they said, ‘Do you know this guy?’

and Peter said, ‘No,’ and Jesus looked at

Peter. And then the cops took him away.

ese madrigals are about

what is in that one look—when

Jesus just looked at Peter and

then was taken away. And Peter

saw that look the rest of his life.

Of course, it’s classic synesthesia,

all the senses overlapping. Music

is there to give you the sense of

touch, the sense of smell. In the

very rst number, Peter sees all

the police, all these swords and

spears: ‘I don’t want you to pierce

me. And so I’m going to escape.’

Of course, what he doesn’t realize

is that the arrows of Jesus’s gaze

will pierce him the rest of his life.

“And yet, what lets you

know that Orlando is one of the

greatest composers who ever

lived is that like Bach, or even

like Mahler for that matter, this

music of great despair has this

incredible light shining through

it. So it’s not just a kind of minor

seventh chord from Verdi. It’s not

just crisis. It’s that this crisis is ac-

tually getting closer to God. And

it’s not until you’re in the middle

of a crisis that you’re going to be

ready to receive spiritual illumi-

nation. And because spiritual

illumination is not for the com-

fortable and the satis ed, it’s for

the people who are in agony in

this world and are searching and

searching for something else; this

is music of crisis and despair that

is fused with light and transcen-

dence and beauty. You get that

this crisis is one step away from

salvation. And that is the mark

of a great composer, when the music

of crisis is also exultant, not simply

devastating.”

Veteran award-winning journalist and critic Dennis

Polkow is a columnist for

Newcity Chicago

and a

Chicago correspondent for London-based

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SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 – MAY 11, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE