Death at Jay Pritzker Pavilion

The End of the Grant Park Music Festival 2011 Season

Requiem as Art and Drama

The thought of ending the Grant Park Music Festival with Giuseppe Verdi’s great Requiem Mass, in Memory of Alessandro Manzoni for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Tenor and Bass Soloists, Mixed Chorus and Orchestra immediately conjured images in my mind of all the terrors of Medieval Christianity as so effectively documented by that obscure 13^th century Franciscan friar-poet (generally thought to be Thomas of Celano (c. 1200 – c. 1260–1270)  whose Dies Irae is included in so many of the world’s great musical settings of the Missa defunctorum or Mass of the Dead. Thomas’s words are here presented in  the English translation from Latin by William Josiah Irons that replicates the rhyme and metre of the original.

The day of wrath, that day

Will dissolve the world in ashes
As foretold by David and the sibyl!

Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth,

when from heaven the Judge descendeth,
on whose sentence all dependeth.

Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth;

through earth's sepulchers it ringeth;
all before the throne it bringeth.

Death is struck, and nature quaking,

all creation is awaking,
to its Judge an answer making.

Lo! the book, exactly worded,

wherein all hath been recorded:
thence shall judgment be awarded.

When the Judge his seat attaineth,

and each hidden deed arraigneth,
nothing unavenged remaineth.

What shall I, frail man, be pleading?

Who for me be interceding,
when the just are mercy needing?

King of Majesty tremendous,

who dost free salvation send us,
Fount of pity, then befriend us!

Think, good Jesus, my salvation

cost thy wondrous Incarnation;
leave me not to reprobation!

Faint and weary, thou hast sought me,

on the cross of suffering bought me.
shall such grace be vainly brought me?

Righteous Judge! for sin's pollution

grant thy gift of absolution,
ere the day of retribution.

Guilty, now I pour my moaning,

all my shame with anguish owning;
spare, O God, thy suppliant groaning!

Thou the sinful woman savedst;

thou the dying thief forgavest;
and to me a hope vouchsafest.

Worthless are my prayers and sighing,

yet, good Lord, in grace complying,
rescue me from fires undying!

With thy favored sheep O place me;

nor among the goats abase me;
but to thy right hand upraise me.

While the wicked are confounded,

doomed to flames of woe unbounded
call me with thy saints surrounded.

Now I kneel, with heart submission,

see, like ashes, my contrition;
help me in my last condition.

Ah! that day of tears and mourning!

From the dust of earth returning
man for judgment must prepare him;

Spare, O God, in mercy spare him!

Lord, all pitying, Jesus blest,
grant them thine eternal rest.
Amen.

Aside from the fact that this sort of drama exhibits strong evidence that early Christians were a fearful lot, terrified of even the slightest transgression against their wrathful and jealous god, this is the stuff of great drama and if Verdi was anything, he was a great dramatist. For that matter, so was Hector Berlioz who also made effective use of the same Dies Irae although in a different setting. Other texts in the Requiem are also found in the Ordinary Mass; the Kyrie is one such portion as are Sanctus and Agnus Dei.

But it is the Dies Irae that seemed to preoccupy Verdi more than any other section. It is the lengthiest of all of the sections of Verdi’s Requiem. It begins with four “hammer blows” from the orchestra  that are guaranteed to wake even most soundly sleeping corpse and proceeds to terrify us with liturgical power, apocalyptical imagery and sheer musical genius for nearly one-third the of the entire ninety-odd minute composition. Those hammer blows fittingly return along with Thomas’s opening words near the end of the section just before Lacrimosa (tears). The hammer blows and Thomas’s reminder of our impending death, destruction and judgement occurs once more near the end of the Requiem in  Libera me (deliver me). I occurred to me that Verdi’s hammer blows may have somehow inspired Gustav Mahler’s use of a similar device in his 6^th Symphony twenty-five years later. Both effects are somehow linked to the notion of “fate,” although the musical realization is different. Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky was another composer who seemed to be preoccupied with “fate.” Tchaikovsky’s best known exploration of fate is probably the theme used in his Fifth symphony (that he borrowed from Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Czar). Unlike the hammer blows of Verdi and Mahler, however, Tchaikovsky used a melodic representation. Tchaikovsky has sometimes been disparagingly referred to as “Mr. Melody.” There can be no doubt that Tchaikovsky’s prowess at endless melodic invention is one of the greatest of any composer who ever lived, so it is not surprising that he chose melody rather than rhythm to represent man’s destiny.

The Festival Ends on a High Note

The Festival’s presentation of Verdi’s great masterpiece was no less than excellent. Soprano Amber Wagner, a recent graduate of the Lyric Opera’s Patrick G. and Shirley Ryan Opera Center, is clearly a force to be reckoned with as she moves forward with her singing career. No less impressive was Mezzo-soprano Michaela Martens who made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2006–2007. Wagner, Martens and the chorus joined forces in the breathtakingly beautiful and transparent Agnus Dei. Tenor Michael Fabiano delivered Igmenisco (groans) with an artistry that both extracted pity and delighted the listener by its sheer artistry and the tambre of his fine tenor voice. Bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen often faced difficult passages requiring great strength in his lowest registers along with a considerable tessitura. His Confutatis (roughly “convicted and cast out”) wrenched our hearts as he implored forgiveness and entrance into the Shangri-La of the saved.

Great praise goes to the Grant Park Chorus for its superb performance. Christopher Bell, the Festival’s regular Chorus Director had returned to his principal duties in Scotland but the chorus was ably prepared for the Verdi performances by Guest Chorus Director William Spaulding. Spaulding is an American whose current position is with the Deutsch Oper Berlin as Principal Chorus Master. Nowhere was the chorus put to greater effect than in the Sanctus, the musical climax of the Requiem. If you failed to experience electricity in your spine during Sanctus you were probably one of the corpses for whom the Requiem was intended.

The chorus has been used on a number of occasions this season and has given listeners much more than any of us has a right to expect. The Grant Park Chorus is truly one of the great choral organizations in music today. Next year will be the Chorus’s fiftieth anniversary year. What can they possibly do to exceed the artistry they have delivered this year and for so many years? Be sure to watch for next year’s programming.

The musicians of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra rank high in musical ability and accomplishment. As an ensemble they are among the most unique of all orchestras in that they arrive en masse one day in June, instruments in hand, greet one another after nearly nine months of absence, sit down and begin rehearsing. Two days later they present their first performance. During the next ten weeks they prepare twenty different programs. The demands made on these musicians are nothing short of immense and even more astonishing is the way in which they rise to the challenges and deliver quality and even outstanding music week after week that improves over time as they become more and more accustomed to playing as an ensemble.

The musicians of the orchestra for the most part are gone from Chicago now. They have returned to other places to continue making music and pursuing their musical artistry. Most will be back again next year. Chicago is indeed fortunate to have this legacy of musical quality.

Finally, consider Carlos Kalmar, who is now Music Director as well as Principal Conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival. Where would we be without him? Tireless and endowed with boundless energy he arrives at rehearsal on his bicycle (in good weather). On hot days he has a supply of clean t-shirts that quickly become soaked with perspiration during the hot afternoons of rehearsals. He then faces three evenings a week most weeks conducting performances. Add to this his musical and leadership skills and you have a small sense of the great treasure Chicago has in Kalmar’s annual Summer residence.

The Verdi Requiem is a particularly good example of Kalmar’s great musical and leadership skills. Consider that by the time you assemble a full chorus and symphony orchestra plus soloists and antiphonal brass (did I forget to mention the antiphonal brass that are a part of the Dies Irae?) Kalmar faces nearly 200 musicians whose intention is to present one of the great masterpieces of Western music. What is needed, of course, is the leadership, artistry and control of a great conductor. Kalmar’s abilities were nowhere more apparent than the Verdi Requiem that concluded the Grant Park Music Festival Season.

Next Year

It’s a bit early to speculate about the Festival’s programming for next year. We know that planning has already begun but final announcements of the 2012 season programming won’t appear until well into next year. We do know that the Chorus will celebrate a major anniversary, so it’s reasonable to expect a pretty exciting season of choral and vocal presentations.

Advice: Save your Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings in June, July and August for some of the best music anywhere at a price you can easily afford. We may run into each other at a Festival concert next year.