Il vangelo secondo Marco -- oratorio -- Buenos Aires opera house

Speranza


Il vangelo secondo Marco -- oratorio, Buenos Aires opera house
Speranza

So the question is, who is Osvaldo Golijov and why is he such a big deal?

(The passion according to San Osvaldo).

That is, such is the question on the outside chance that someone who reads a blog in a Cleveland Orchestra site is not familiar with the composer of the songs soprano Dawn Upshaw will sing this weekend at Knight Hall.

But not everyone who cares about classical music cares about contemporary work enough to follow it.

So skip this if you know it already.

Otherwise, hang with me for a short while.

Though he’d been around long enough to study with G. Crumb, have his work recorded by the ultra-trendy Kronos Quartet, and collaborate with rockers, Osvaldo Golijov burst on the scene at the very birth of the century with what got called the first masterpiece of the new millenium:

Il Vangelo secondo Marco.

This lively oratorio is, in the composer’s own quip,

a Catholic Mass written by a Jew.

The libretto come straight from the gospel because, according to Golijov:

“St. Mark is very clear.”

What distinguishes this work is the music.

There isn’t a single traditionally classical lick.

The music from "Il Vangelo secondo Marco" comes from various popular genres, like salsa — one could dance to some segments — and Brazilian song, as well as Afro-Cuban sacred drumming.

Golijov went to Cuba to study the double-sided Batá drum used in Santería religious ritual so he could write music for it in his oratorio.

The critics were impressed.

Well, not _all_.

There was criticism of using such vernacular musical language for a sacred theme.

But the piece was a hit.

And Golijov became a star.

So much of a star that in 2006 Lincoln Center devoted an entire festival to him, The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov.

When his opera about poet Federico Garcia Lorca, Ainadamar, was performed at the Santa Fe Opera House in 2005, Peter Sellars staged it.

And Francis Ford Coppola commissioned Golijov to write music for one of his films.


Dawn Upshaw sang the central female character in Ainadamar.

Her performance of Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra is the composer’s latest important work, albeit based on earlier compositions, which we will hear Friday and Saturday night with the Cleveland Orchestra.
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Il Vangelo secondo Marco, oratorio -- Buenos Aires opera house
Speranza


Cross-cultural fusion has been a defining feature of contemporary music in many genres, but until recently it was comparatively rare in the classical field.

That situation changed with the emergence of Golijov.

Golijov merges a dizzying variety of traditions in his work:

tango, Eastern European Jewish klezmer music, Afro-Caribbean and Brazilian percussion, contemporary classical vocal techniques and orchestral writing, modern laptop electronics, traditional Jewish and Christian religious chants, and many more.

Audiences respond with enthusiasm to Golijov's accessible, colourful compositions, and critic John Von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune called him "the poster child for all that's exciting and accessible in today's new classical music."

Golijov uses these various traditions not with the aim of creating exotic effects but in order to express specific ideas as part of a humanistic, international vision.

Golijov's language is musically diverse partly because of the diversity of his own background.

As he told Caleb Bach of Americas,

"I am simply an extension of what I heard at home:

the classics,

the Russians,

tango, Jewish music."

Born in the province of Buenos Ayres,

Golijov was the child of

immigrant parents, a

Russian atheist father and

a

Romanian mother

who played the piano and
took her son to the old Italian opera house in the capital of the province of Buenos Ayres.

He grew up speaking Yiddish, Russian, and Romanian.

Both of Golijov's parents liked tango, which left a strong imprint on the music of the adult Golijov.

Another fundamental influence came from Jewish religious observances.

"My music comes from the theatre of the synagogue, where one man mumbles, another screams," he told the Economist by way of explaining the "semi-chaotic" quality of his music, with multiple events and perspectives following closely upon one another.

Golijov wanted to be a composer from the start, and when he was ten his mother enrolled him in an extension class at Argentina's national conservatory.

Golijov left Argentina and moved to Israel, where he studied with composer Mark Kopytman at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem and immersed himself in Arab musical traditions.

In 1986 Golijov moved to the United States and studied under G. Crumb.

He later took further courses with O. Knussen at the Tanglewood Institute.

In 1991 Golijov became associated with College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, near Boston.

Golijov and his wife, Silvia, have three children.

His compositional career started slowly.

His string quartet "Yid-dishbbuk," written when he was 31, was the first work with which he was fully satisfied.

Arranged Mexican Music for Kronos Quartet

The work, written as a tribute to children killed at the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin, Poland, contained scream-like effects for the string players that were difficult to capture in traditional musical notation, so Golijov met with the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the ensemble that was to premiere the work.

"When we met Ozzie, he listened and heard our frustration," violinist Barry Shiffman recalled to Paul Griffiths of the New York Times.

"He began to describe what he was after. When we asked him to sing it, well, everything changed. He was not 'singing.' It was more like crying, screaming, praying, all mixed up together. We got it."

The group became one of two string quartets that championed Golijov's work.

In 2001 it recorded Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (1994) for string quartet and clarinet.

That work won the Friedheim Award from Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center in 1995.

The other supporter was the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet, which, like Golijov, was interested in incorporating folk and popular traditions into classical music.

Golijov served as arranger on the Kronos Quartet's Nuevo album, which was based on a range of materials drawn from popular music.

More and more top classical ensembles requested new music from Golijov in the middle and late 1990s, and he made his first mark in Europe with a commission in 1996 from the Birmingham, England, Contemporary Music Group for Last Round, a tribute to Piazzolla.

Soon after that came Golijov's real breakthrough.

He was one of FOUR composers commissioned by H. Rilling to compose

Passion settings (drawn from the

FOUR books of the New Testament and describing the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus) in honour of the 250th anniversary of the death of Sebastian Bach.

Created Latin American Passion Setting

At first the Golijov suggested that Rilling find a Christian composer instead.

Then, after having agreed to compose the Passion According to St. Mark, he turned to other projects as a distraction (indeed, several major Golijov projects have been finished at the last minute).

Finally a unique vision of the work began to take shape in Golijov's mind.

It would be a theatrical piece, with singers and dancers, set in contemporary times in a Brazilian street scene, and it would be filled with Latin rhythms.

These included four major musical styles:

1. A chanting vocalist accompanied by Afro-Cuban drumming.

2. The flamenco idiom.

3. Brazilian percussion styles; and

4. A style resembling Gregorian chant.

Golijov was nervous as he rehearsed the choir that was to participate in the premiere performance, for he was the only Jew most of its members had ever met.

But the premiere in 2000 in Stuttgart, Germany, was a triumph, as an audience of usually reserved Germans applauded for 20 minutes.

Successful performances in Boston soon followed.

Picking up additional publicity when a recording of the "Vangelo secondo Marco" garnered Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations in 2002, and when he won a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" the following year, Golijov found himself very much in demand in the early 2000s.

Two of his most significant projects of this period were the opera

"Ainadamar", which dealt with the 1936 assassination of Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca, and

"Ayre", a song cycle recorded by prominent soprano Dawn Upshaw.

Ayre was a daring mixture of Spanish, Jewish, Arabic, and other ethnic and religious musical traditions, pointing toward the coexistence of Jewish and Muslim cultures in medieval Spain.

The work also used electronic sounds created by Golijov on a laptop computer, a technique heretofore more often associated with popular music than with the classical mode.

The serious themes of these works were typical, but at the same time, the vernacular (folk and popular) musical traditions used in these works made them accessible to concert audiences.

Golijov believes that it is crucial to forge bonds with audiences, and he rejected the dissonant and atonal musical language of much contemporary classical composition.

Some critics charged that his music was kitschy.

"But then Mozart is silly at times," Golijov remarked to London's Daily Telegraph.

"I want everything that pertains to the human condition in my music—and that includes kitsch and silliness. Modernism has been overly intellectual."

As of early 2006, Golijov's plate was crowded with new projects.

He planned to write the score for a film, Youth Without Youth, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

New works for the Kronos and St. Lawrence quartets were on the way, as was a piece for star cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

And he has been named co-composer-in-residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Speaking to Von Rhein, Golijov expressed a desire to bring various music-making ensembles from different parts of Chicago together.

"Hopefully I can be a resource in bringing different parts of the city to the orchestra, and the orchestra to different parts of the city," he said.

He had already made a major difference in the world of classical music, opening it up to new influences in a series of dramatic masterstrokes.

Selected discography

The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, Nonesuch, 1997.

IL VANGELO SECONDO MARCO.
La Pasión segun San Marcos, Hänssler, 2001.
Nuevo (Kronos Quartet), Nonesuch, 2002.
Yiddishbbuk, EMI, 2002.Ayre, Deutsche Grammophon, 2005.Ainadamar, Deutsche Grammphon, 2006.

Sources
Periodicals
Americas (English edition), March-April 2003, p. 46.
Chicago Tribune, June 9, 2006.
Daily Telegraph (London, England), January 26, 2006, p. 29.
Economist, January 14, 2006, p. 83.
Financial Times, January 23, 2006, p. 15.
Independent (London, England), February 14, 2006, p. 41.
New Yorker, September 1, 2003, p. 128.
New York Times, October 27, 2002, p. AR1.
Observer (London, England), January 1, 2006, p. 8.
Opera News, August 2005, p. 36; December 2005, p. 77.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/osvaldo-golijov-classical-musician#ixzz1ofzPaNb7

Born in the province of Buenos Ayres, Argentina; married; wife's name, Silvia; three children. Education: Began studying composition in Argentina at age ten; attended Rubin Academy, Jerusalem, Israel; Pennsylvania, further study at Tanglewood Institute, Lenox, MA. College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, Boston Conservatory; obtained major commissions for new music, early 1990s; composed

oratorio, "Il Vangelo secondo Marco" (St. Mark Passion) for European Music Festival, 2000;
composed opera Ainadamar, 2003; song cycle Ayre recorded by soprano Dawn Upshaw for Deutsche Grammophon label, 2005; retrospective concerts of works, The Passion of Osvaldo Golijov, 2006.

Awards: MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
The operatic season opens March 14 with O. Golijov’s "Il Vangelo secondo Marco" – the Argentine premiere of this oratorio, commissioned by H. Rilling to commemorate the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s death.

Musical direction is by María Guinand and the principals include

Biella Da Costa,

Jessica Rivera,

Luciana Souza,

Reynaldo González-Fernández,

Giaconda Cabrera,

Manolo Mairena.

Un evento musicale

Sabato 15 marzo, nella Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio,

è stata rappresentata "Il Vangelo secondo Marco",

di O. Golijov,

un oratorio completato

da momenti figurativi,

in genere non consueti in questo

tipo di sacra rappresentazione.

Golijov, compositore in residence della Chicago Symphony Orchestra,

lo è stato anche del

"Mostly Mozart" Festival del Lincoln Center nel 2007,

e prima, di numerose istituzioni di alto livello artistico quali la

Boston Symphony Orchestra, per la quale ha composto un Concerto per violoncello.

E’ autore altresì di un’opera sulla

morte di Garcia Lorca, dal titolo

"Aimadamar" e

la colonna sonora del film

"Un’altra giovinezza" di Francis Ford Coppola.

Questa composizione operistica ha avuto due premi Grammy,

per la miglior composizione operistica e per la miglior composizione contemporanea.

Golijov ha studiato con grandi maestri negli USA e in Israele.

La sua provenienza da una famiglia ebrea
originaria dell’Europa centrale sembrerebbe
spiegare l’assonanza della musica Kletzmer,
mentre il soggiorno in Argentina spiega la presenza
di motivi popolari afro-cubani come pure
la presenza di strumenti tipici di quelle
regioni nel suo complesso orchestrale.

Nel 250° della scomparsa di J.S.Bach,

Golijov ha partecipato ad un grande

progetto musicale in onore del grande compositore

ed organista tedesco con

la Sacra Rappresentazione

"Il Vangelo secondo Marco"

in

34

episodi musicali,

accompagnati da impeccabili quanto misurate manifestazioni sceniche,

dalla danza fino alle scene del martirio di Cristo.


Il libretto è quello desunto dal

"Vangelo secondo Marco".

Ma le ultime battute sono

in

aramaico

e sono un inno al Dio senza aggettivazioni, quello che per le

tre
religioni
mono-teistiche hanno in comune.

Ma la figura del figlio rifulge quale motore di un carico doloroso, ma salvifico, ed alla fine rassegnato alla volontà del padre,
seguendo alla lettera il Vangelo di Marco.

Musica esotica e

musica classica

si alternano.

La prima, ad indicare la partecipazione popolare e corale del dramma.

La seconda, di chiara ispirazione "mittel-europea",

caratterizza in particolare i momenti di pathos individuale,
nel contesto di una passione che tutti accomuna e talora atterrisce.

Drammatico e travolgente il Kaddish,
cantato in
aramaico,
che chiude la Sacra Rappresentazione con l’
"Amen" dell’accettazione
della morte nella certezza della Resurrezione del Cristo e dell’uomo.

Un tessuto musicale straordinario,
non raramente impegnato in spunti drammatici, al
quale ha corrisposto un’esecuzione dei soli e
dei cori di eccezionale livello.

Dieci minuti di applausi ed una standing ovation hanno significato l’animo degli ascoltatori, certamente consapevoli di aver partecipato ad un evento – non solo musicale – di altissimo livello.

Organizzato dalla Facoltà di Economia dell’Università del Sacro Cuore nel 60° della fondazione, per il quale dobbiamo essere grati al nostro Alberto Cova, Preside della Facoltà, alla professoressa Paola Fandella, responsabile del corso di economia e cultura aziendale, ed al nostro Gigi Ferrario, che hanno profuso tempo e capacità per questo evento straordinario che alla grande tradizione europea del "Vangelio secondo Marco" ha, per la prima volta affiancato, con pari dignità quella di Golijov.