Many thanks to all who attended my talk on twentieth-century sacred music last night at Trinity Church. I was particularly happy to see David Elliott from WHRB and Bettina Norton from the Boston Musical Intelligencer. During the Q&A, I somehow digressed into telling the story of how I once began giggling helplessly during a performance of the Schnittke Requiem, in Boston in 1988, with the composer sitting some ten rows in front of me. I can only pray he didn't hear the disturbance; I certainly made no mention of it when I interviewed Schnittke at the Watergate in 1994. Today I spent many happy hours browsing through the awe-inspiring stacks of Widener Library, where I tracked down a copy — a signed copy, no less — of Joséphin Péladan's Le Fils des étoiles. Satie's extraordinary piano pieces of the same title played a role in my lecture; a full playlist is below. At a later date I will announce details of my new religious denomination, the Secret Order of the Invisible Temple of the Quietly Dissonant Hexachord.
PLAYLIST:
Frank Martin, Agnus Dei from Mass for Double Choir; Westminster Cathedral Choir (Hyperion)
Janáček, Agnece Bozij from Glagolitic Mass; Michael Tilson Thomas conducting (Sony)
Salvatore Martirano, Agnus Dei from Mass; John Oliver Chorale (New World)
Britten, Agnus Dei from the War Requiem; Britten conducting (Decca)
Bernstein, Agnus Dei from Mass; Bernstein conducting (Sony)
Wagner, Prelude to Act III of Parsifal; Thielemann conducting (DG)
Satie, Le Fils des étoiles; Reinbert de Leeuw, piano (Philips)
Schoenberg, beginning of Die Jakobsleiter; Boulez conducting (Sony)
Schoenberg, beginning of Moses und Aron; Boulez conducting (DG)
Stravinsky, Adoration of the Earth from The Rite of Spring; Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting (DG)
Stravinsky, Psalm 150 from Symphony of Psalms; Bernstein conducting (Sony)
Cage, Ryoanji; Robert Black, Eberhard Blum, Iven Hausmann, Gudrun Reschke, John-Patrick Thomas, Jan Williams (Hat Art)
Feldman, Rothko Chapel; California EAR Unit, UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus (New Albion)
Stockhausen, Gesang der Jünglinge
Ligeti, Requiem; Jonathan Nott conducting (Teldec)
Penderecki, Utrenja II: The Resurrection of Christ; Andrzej Markowski conducting (Polskie Nagrania)
Ustvolskaya, Composition II, “Dies Irae”; Reinbert de Leeuw conducting (Philips)
Pärt, Credo; Neeme Järvi conducting (Chandos)
Pärt, Da pacem Domine; Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (Harmonia Mundi)
Messiaen, the Angel Musician scene from Saint François d’Assise; Kent Nagano conducting (DG)
Messiaen, "Zion Park" from Des Canyons aux étoiles; Reinbert de Leeuw conducting (Naïve)
Omitted as time ran out: Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Requiem for a Young Poet, Glass's Satyagraha, Reich's Tehillim, Gubaidulina's Offertorium. Naturally, this was only a limited cross-section of a vast subject; I decided to focus in particular on the intersection between modernist and avant-garde traditions and religious subject-matter — what I called the "dark sacred" or "negative sublime."