Waiting for happiness or sadness or misery or redemption
Free Be-a-Maestro Newsletter 51 - 01 March 2016 - Be a maestro!
by Reinier Maliepaard
It's a must: you have to see films by the Italian film director Paolo Sorrentino. 'La Grande Bellezza' (2013) and 'Youth' (2015) would be a great choice. I'm sure you will remember at least one thing: the amazing film music of the American composer David Lang (1957). Lang's 'I Lie' (2001) opens the film 'La Grande Bellezza' ('The Great Beauty'). The four voice piece for female choir works with minimal materials. The performance according the score has to be: 'rhythmically mechanical - like a clock but intimate and very tender'. The result: a music with hypnotic quality -in a way ritualistic as music from Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, Henryk Górecki or the organum music from the medieval Notre Dame school (1). Easy to perform? No! As George Heathco (2) said:
"One thing that seems to run central to performing Lang's music is the amount of concentration and mental stamina required to just get through a piece. He gives the performer very little opportunity to let up, mentally. [snip] Works like lend/lease or string of pearls have an element of subtle virtuosity. They don't immediately sound flashy or technically demanding to the listener, but from the performer's point of view it is a whole other story!"
When the Pulitzer prize-winning composer David Lang was asked to write a kind of 'modern folk song', it seemed 'natural' to him (3)
"...to take the text of an old Yiddish song and give it new music. I chose this particular text because it has a darkly expectant feeling about it. It isn't about being happy or sad or miserable or redeemed; rather, it is about waiting for happiness or sadness or misery or redemption. As is the case in many Yiddish songs, something as ordinary as a girl waiting for her lover can cast many darker, more deeply beautiful shadows."
The text by Joseph Rolnick is:
Leyg ikh mir in bet arayn
Un lesh mir oys dos fayer
Kumen vet er haynt tsu mir
Der vos iz mire tayer
Banen loyfn tsvey a tog
Eyne kumt in ovnt
Kh'her dos klingen  glin glin glon
Yo, er iz shoyn noent
Shtundn hot di nakht gor fil
Eyns der tsveyter triber
Eyne iz a fraye nor
Ven es kumt mayn liber
Ikh her men geyt, men klapt in tir,
Men ruft mikh on baym nomen
Ikh loyf arop a borvese
Yo! Er iz gekumen!
I lie down in bed alone
And snuff out my candle
Today he will come to me
Who is my treasure
The trains run twice a day
One comes at night
I hear them clanging  glin, glin, glon
Yes, now he is near
The night is full of hours
Each one sadder than the next
Only one is happy
When my beloved comes
I hear someone coming, someone raps on
the door
Someone calls me by name
I run out barefoot
Yes! He is come!
The text of 'I lie' is about waiting and its repercussions like stress, anxiety, uncertainty and confusion. Lang's music depicts -rather loosely- several 'growing' sensations of 'waiting':
- from two-part to four-part, from simple to more complex sounds
- from an easy rhythmical musical design towards a rhythmical more intense music due to polyrhythm: listen to the remarkable tuplets in the solo voice, interacting with 'normal' lower voices ('I hear someone coming, someone raps on the door...').
On the other hand, there are several factors that do not change: all actions are performed within a well-defined space, maybe depicting the predictable routines of 'waiting':
- 'rhythmically mechanical': no tempo or dynamical changes
- the registers of each voice do not alter.
- the melodies in each voice are an elaboration of a minimal number of tones and sounds (4). One could apply the terms 'variable ostinato' and 'heterophony' (5) to Lang's technique.
And a question for you: which effect do the rests in Lang's 'I lie' have?
Listen on YouTube to David Lang's 'I lie': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO8DqDWBzLI
Notes
(1) www.bestmusicteacher.com/music-history/mindmaps-schools-styles/mindmap_ars_antiqua.php
(2) www.sequenza21.com/tag/david-lang/
(3) www.davidlangmusic.com
(4) fragments of the score: http://digital.schirmer.com/chamber/tri/sample/samples/l/I_Lie_30036.pdf
(5) http://www.bestmusicteacher.com/music-history/mindmap-terms/mindmap-heterophony.html