Santa Fe New Music launched its third season on Friday, November 8, 2002
at 8:00 pm at the Santuario de Guadalupe in Santa Fe, with the performance
of , SFNM Artistic Director John
Kennedy's chamber cantata for countertenor/baritone, string quartet, and
percussion, written for and sung by the remarkable New York-based singer
Bruce Rameker.
Utilizing texts
by Walt Whitman, Kenneth Patchen, Joy Harjo, Gary Snyder, and others, One Body premiered in New York in 1998,
and has subsequently been performed at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston,
SC. Of the piece, The Charleston Post and Courier has written: "Kennedy has crafted a work of truth and beauty more
lasting than even he knows."
Released as a CD in 2000, One Body is
a frequently requested selection on the nationally syndicated "New
Sounds Live" radio program produced by WNYC in New York.
Also on this program, which repeated on Sunday, November 9, also at
8:00, was the world premiere of Webassin,
by the Emmy-winning, Minnesota composer Steve Heitzeg. The title is from
the Objibwe phrase: "I am carried by the wind." An "old
music" selection, Caritas Habundat in Omnia,
written in the 13th century by Hildegard von Bingen, was also performed
by Rameker, in his crystalline countertenor voice.
"It may surprise some that an organization dedicated to new music
would program something from the medieval ages," says Kennedy, "but
it is precisely unfolding these sorts of esthetic and thematic relationships
across the centuries that helps us contextualize the music of today."
Program Notes
Prior to 1998, most of my music followed modernist notions of abstraction
and system molded by rationalized modes of expression. In that year, a
number of life-events (including parenthood) compelled me to make a piece
that I had probably been holding back for a long time, and that perhaps
might be considered more self-expressive. It was important to me that
if I went this direction, that it represent shared belief more than individual. One Body evolved from this sensibility,
and also from the idea of writing a work for Bruce Rameker in which he
could use both is baritone and countertenor range. As I selected texts,
most of which I had loved for a very long time, I began to think of the
work as a chamber cantata.
The notion of a cantata implies religious overtones, and people have
sometimes asked me if I think of this work as religious. And in an expansive
sense of religious, the answer is yes—especially in a world where
for many people, traditional religions are not always adequate for expressing
t heir sense of the spiritual and the sacramental. The texts woven together
here seem in essence pan-religious, expressive of belief shared in many
times and cultures, including our culture today. That said, my introduction
to this piece in the score is as follows:
"In recent years, the work of ecobiologists
such as James Lovelock have helped foster a view of the Earth as a
single living entity, Gaia, 'self-regulating and endowed with faculties
and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.' This scientific
point of view complements the spiritual perspectives from many cultures
and times, and offers the possibility of reinvigorating in contemporary
culture a sacramental view of life.
"As one who shares this sensibility,
I sought with One Body to express not only the spiritual dimensions
of this notion, but also to address conflicting cultural conditioning,
such as stereotypes of gender, division by species, and the fallacy
of "race." I also wanted to unite a collection of texts
by multiple authors, a modern liturgy of secular humanism which joins
spirituality with intellectual freedom.
The five movements of One Body are connected
without break. Within these movements are instrumental transitions
which serve as reflections or prayers: a viola solo (speaking to difference
and ambiguity), cello solo (to the soul, anima), percussion duo (to
the Earth), violin duo (to the great mysteries), and string quartet
(to love and the ancestors.)"
It is a special occasion to present this work in the Santuario de
Guadalupe, the home of the Virgen de Guadalupe, "the mother of the
new creation," and a relatively recent religious figure who brings
love, unity, and meaning to mestizo. The two short works which begin this
concert are kindred spirits. Hildegard wrote her music long before la
Guadalupina appeared, but she too speaks of the religious impulse growing
from Mother Earth. Steve Heitzeg is a Minnesota composer with a rich body
of work dedicated to the love of earth and life. As Kenneth Patchen says,
"We may join the thinking which is eternally around us."
—John Kennedy, Artistic Director, Santa Fe New Music
