Good morning, good noon, good afternoon, good evening, good night. Is your friend Aulinda Wei here again. First of all, Merry Christmas, whether you are a religious person or not, please just enjoy this beautiful holiday and take a break from life. At least, I hope you are not like me, alone, at home, writing scripts and recording podcasts at 11 PM on the day of Christmas.
However, the performance I want to talk about today is also really associated with Christmas, or the broader idea of religion. El Nīno, nativity reconsidered. which In my personal interpretation, It is a part of the christmas event of cathedral church of saint john the divine. For those who dont know, the cathedra, church of saint Jogn the divine, sitting near Columbus University(only reason for me to mention that is because as Chinese, my parents love that college), uptown manhattan, is the largest church in new york. They got 96 flying buttres and all of the nice interiors. The only reason why I’m mentioning the phrases flying buttres is because it will be in my art appreciation final, and yes, art appreciation is mandatory if you are a stuyvesant high school student. Back to the church, it is really beautiful and if there’s any chance please do visit, it worth.
I arrived the church at 7PM, right after I finished the script for the circle songs episode. The concert haven’t start yet but I'm just feeling some pressure. Let’s set up a scene, when you are sitting with those old classical music lovers who act like critics, judging and naming all the people who are going to participate in this performance and you are just a 14 years old little kiddo who’s here only because 1.love to music, 2.Ticket are affordable, 3.Anthony Roth Costanzo. No offend but it is so terrifying to sit with those 80 years old people in fine cloth with glasses and talks to their mates like judges or lawyer that’s on a court, I don’t know what else can I say. and thI am actually so scared, I’m just a cute little high school kid please save me from this situation.
Okay that performance finished. What should I say. On the program, it saids it will starts at 7:30 and last for 2 hours. Great, we all know that there just aren’t any performance that will be started on time, we began at 7:45, and ended at 8:45, well, I know it is pay-as-what-you-wish but, it is still kinda like a scam for me. I’m sorry to describe it this way but you know, I was just expecting more than that.
I have to say the phrase I’m sorry again. It is actually all of my fault my cold is just so serious that I can’t concentrate on the composition. People somtimes said that they are baptized by the music, but for me today, I’m assinated by my cold. I almost passed over because in order to be respectful I didn’t choose to cough and I was almost chocked.
I mean, turning this podcast into a podcast that full with me complaining how serious my cold is right now isn’t my intention. Just like I accidentally turned the last one into a podcast teaching people don’t date math guys. Whatever, you get my point.
Back to the performanceee, I randomly sense Philip Glass, nothing related to minilisms at all. Not only because people sitting around me talked about Akhenaten but the way that (the composer) inserted narrative voices. I know that we all know every composer can insert some narrative voice in their composition, why specifically Philip glass is the common topic that El Niño and Akhenaten share, religion.
I’m not going to much about religion only because myself is not that deep in the field and I came from a family that don’t have any believes and simply atheist. I find it interesting just how the religion music evolved. The evolution of religious music is a dynamic process shaped by historical, cultural, technological, and social factors. It continues to adapt and thrive, reflecting the diversity and richness of human spiritual expression. To clarify, I didn’t wrote that, credit to chatGPT. But whatever, let’s simply set the evolution of religion music to different phrases, Ancient Roots —--> Expansion of Genres —----> Innovation and Adaptation. And here comes El Nino, the innovation and adaptation.
We all know that, it is called El Niño, nativity reconsidered, or using simply language, the recomposed of the original El Nino. Premiered in 2000, El Nino was composed by John Adams, which is also one of the composers I like. John Adams is a minimalist, wait, thats actually another reason why el nino reminds me of akhnaten except for anthony roth costanzo and the religion theme. Adams work includes Nixon in China, by the way, even though there are some comments on that, it is still one of the operas that I’m interested in, The Death of Klinghoffer, Doctor Atomic, and a bunch of others. From what i remembered, the Metropolitan Opera will be performing John Adasm’s original version of El Nīno next year from april to may. If I made a mistake please correct me.
Not going to say to much about the theme or anything related to religion because again, I don’t want to talk about a topic that I don’t know much with. But if you would like to have a discussion on that with me, then, why not, just send me a email or contact me in ways you would like.
The music selection and rearrangement by JULIA BULLOCK and CHRISTIAN REIF
,specifically mentions the existence of women and children in this piece, which I found really interesting because even looking back to the bibiles or all of the culture production of different religions, we often lack of the solid woman figure. We just want more than the purpose of reproduction and blessing people. There’s definitely more sense of equality involved in this piece of reproduction.
Another thing that I found really interesting is that the (words, lyrics) are partially Spanish and partially English. Which kinda reminds me of the Spanish production, (Florencia en el Amazonas) at the Met this season. We rarely see this popular language used in music productions, latin-americans or spanish speakers in general are still in a minor place in western music industry. I’m glad that the composer can bring this up. I never realized I’m so good at Spanish and my 1 and half year of Spanish learning in middle school does work even though I failed every of my quiz and test. I can actually understand those Spanish parts somehow. It might also be that universal goddess theme that all religious work shared inspired me.
Again, we saw the existence of narrative voices or kinda of the sound of reading in this composition, the Recitativo was bringed back to this contemporary composition. It remind of a random conversation between me and Bruce Adolphe, which is the resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, but of course, he is way more than that. I asked him several questions, but there’s one in particular, the conversation was like.
“you are a composer”
“yes?”
“I notice that you put some narrative voices inside of your composition, can you just tell me about their purpose and elaborate more on that.”
I dont really remember adophole’s words, but he definitely said something. One reason will be, to provide context and information, and also, toned the composition. I also noticed that the existence of narrative voices is heavy in a lot contemporary opera works, is it because there are something that we just can’t convey with the limitation of music? or is it because we just need some words and reading? This reappearance of recitativo in modern composition is an interesting thing that leaves us some nice questions.
I really want to finish recording this episode before christmas ends, and, I guese that will be the end of this episode, see you!!!!!! and Merry christmas.
And, at the very end, if you want to have a discussion with me, please email aulindatang@gmail.com, if there are any chances, please follow my instagram, it is skr_frv, or you can just try to search Aulinda, I can’t guarantee you can find me by this way, but still, you can try. And also, my X(twitter), it is Aulinda W, or aulinda_w, see you in my next episode and merry christmas!