Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Sofia Does Philadelphia

I had been anticipating the Philadelphia Orchestra�s premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina�s Feast During a Plague for some time. The Orchestra had never performed any of Gubaidulina�s work � I had heard that her music was rarely performed in general � and, conducted by Simon Rattle, the Friday, February 17th concert seemed one of the more significant events of Philadelphia�s new music season.

Halfway through the program notes before the concert began, my curiosity was piqued by the description of Gubaidulina�s unapologetic religiousness. �I can�t make a single musical decision except with the goal of making a connection to God,� she commented. The sweep of her composition seemed to confirm this visionary approach; sections of the orchestra moved as one and traded dramatic gestures. One phrase leaping from the lower strings to harp and piano sent shivers up my spine.

Suddenly, (Spoiler warning!) over the loudspeakers exploded a blast of techno so noisy and generic that I believed a terrible mistake had occurred. I was vicariously embarrassed for the Kimmel Center and imagined that somewhere, someone was getting fired. The techno disappeared and returned on and off several times, playing in chunks of maybe a minute each, for most of the latter third of the piece. Rattle was unfazed. He kept a fierce hold over the orchestra, which could not be heard over the thud of the electronica. I gripped my chair.

Feast concluded with orchestration unsullied or �bedeviled by the mysterious intruder. It was triumphant. Audience members leapt their feet in what I imagined to be an expression of sympathetic solidarity. But perhaps I was wrong. As I soon discovered, the program helpfully prepares a dedicated reader, �Then there is an intervention from a new sound source�.[T]he piece moves as a dialogue between the orchestra, in scurrying and melodic strains, against the music from beyond.�

And so what to make of this music from beyond? It was difficult to imagine that Gubaidulina was asking us to regard the techno as a traditional element of her composition, as one among several aesthetic elements. I began to consider the source of her work, one of four �little tragedies� by beloved Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, and, in fact, a significantly modified translation of a poem by a Scottish contemporary of Pushkin�s, John Wilson.

The scene features a group of revelers who have come together during an outbreak of the plague. One of their frequent companions has just died. Two prostitutes belong to the group, one of whom, Mary, sings a folk ballad about a woman who wishes that, if she dies of the plague, her lover, �Watch, but watch you from afar off/ When they bear her corpse away!� The second prostitute, Louisa, ridicules Mary but, at the sight of a passing wagon carrying the dead, faints.

The play�s main character, the �Chairman� Walsingham, remarks, �The cruel are weaker than the tender.� The central drama of this short play, however, is his own hard-heartedness and refused salvation. He sings a song that he himself has composed in honor of the plague, �All, all that threatens to destroy/ Fills mortal hearts with secret joy�And blest is he who can attain/ That ecstasy in storm and strife!� Gubaidulina�s piece is dedicated to Rattle�was she testing his capacity for ecstasy in the storm and strife of conducting over the top of bad techno?

Does Gubaidulina suggest that techno is a plague, that though we may strive to protect ourselves from what we cannot make peace with, it will reach us and those we love, even as we try to shut ourselves in the pleasures of what we understand? Is techno here Gubaidulina�s �wholly other�?

At the conclusion of Pushkin�s scene, a priest enters and reminds the Chairman first of his dead mother, then of his dead wife, trying to tie the nihilistic main character back to his society and conscience, might also, paradoxically, be represented by the �music from beyond.� At the mention of his wife, the Chairman exclaims, �Swear to me, lifting your pale/ And withered hand to Heaven, to leave/ That name forever silenced in the grave!� Similarly, the dialogue between the techno and orchestra prompts from the latter, ��a vociferous outburst�followed by a barrage of percussion against wide string chords.� Do we respond to the rude awakening of our connection to what we would like to remain separate from ourselves prompt a rejection as bold as the Chairman�s? At the priest�s departure, Walsingham falls into �deep contemplation,� overshadowed by the priest�s interruption, though unable to follow him. What of our own ambivalence?

Note: All quotations of �A Feast During the Plague,� by Alexander Pushkin, from Alexander Pushkin: The Little Tragedies, translated, with critical essays, by Nancy K. Anderson (Yale University Press, � 2000).

posted by Alyssa Timin 3/16/2006