Contemporary Music in a Contemplative Space—April 20, 2002

On Saturday, April 20, 2002, Santa Fe New Music and 20th Century Unlimited presented a joint concert of contemporary music at the Santuario de Guadalupe, in Santa Fe.

The first work was a world premiere of Chant for Strings by composer John Kennedy. Exil for soprano and chamber ensemble, was the second piece on the program. This is a work by Giya Kancheli, a composer from Georgia, in the former Soviet Union, who now lives in Belgium. Utilizing texts by Paul Celan, Hans Sahl, and from the Old Testament, Exil is an intensely spiritual work which examines religious exile, but in a larger sense addresses modern society's exile or estrangement from faith and the sacramental.

Performers were Sarah Pelletier, soprano; Robin Lorentz, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Joan Zucker, cello; Derek DeVelder, double bass; Susan Morris DeJong, alto and bass flute; Peter Gordon, keyboard; and John Kennedy, conductor.

Program Notes

Chant for Strings is the most recent installment in a series of works I began in 1988. The works in the "Chant" series use a minimum of chant-like motives, which are shared by the players in various transformations. In addition, each musician proceeds with their own individual sense of time, using a chronometer for reference. Time is not exclusively linear but is also spatial. This kind of musical structure, in which individuals share timespace and material, but move independently, is I think somewhat representative of our lives and human relations. It allows for a different result in each performance and composite harmonies which are ever-changing.

Born in Tbilisi on August 10, 1935, Giya Kancheli is Soviet Georgia's most distinguished living composer and a leading figure in the world of contemporary music. He is associated with the Eastern European composers sometimes referred to as neo-medievalists, including Görecki and Pärt. Kancheli's scores, deeply spiritual in nature, are filled with haunting aural images, varied colors and textures, sharp contrasts and shattering climaxes. His music draws inspiration from Georgian folklore and sings with a heartfelt and refined emotion; it is conceived dramaturgically with a strong linear flow and an expansive sense of musical time.

Best-known as a composer of symphonies and other large-scale works, Kancheli has written seven symphonies, a "liturgy" for viola and orchestra, Mourned by the Wind, and the opera Music for the Living. Kancheli's compositional style owes much to his twenty years of work in the theatre, as Music Director of the Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi. Dislocated by the political and social turbulence in his homeland, Kancheli currently resides in Berlin.

In Exil, Kancheli has selected texts which together, form a constellation of thought which Kancheli has said reflect on the emotions of exile. It is estimated today that over 20 million people worldwide live in political exile. This, of course, does not include the many millions more who may live in their homeland but are in a sense victims of religious or cultural exile, unable to live in the manner they might wish for.

It may be that Kancheli is getting at something much deeper, for those of us living in political freedom and affluence, and in a world of increasing globalization. For me, this work also reflects on contemporary society's exile, or estrangement, from faith and the sacramental. As such, it is perhaps one of the signal works of the late Twentieth Century.

Music, like life itself, is inconceivable without romanticism. Romanticism is a high dream of the past, present, and future... a force of invincible beauty which towers above, and conquers, the forces of ignorance, bigotry, violence, and evil. — Giya Kancheli

— John Kennedy, Artistic Director, Santa Fe New Music