Behind the Music

What’s the Destination in “Song of the Open Road”?

December 11, 2020August 29, 2016 by debisimons

Short answer: It’s not the destination but the journey. (You’ve read that on a poster somewhere, haven’t you?)

First some information on Norman Dello Joio (whom I was at first confusing with Ola Gjello). Dello Joio had a fascinating life and career. He was descended from an Italian family known for producing church organists, and he himself became one at age fourteen at the St. Mary Star of the Sea church in the Bronx. (Isn’t that a cool name for church? If you’d like to read an explanation of why Mary would be associated with this title, go to my post here.) His father was a teacher and performer, and his childhood was full of music and also musical glamour, as some of his father’s voice students were from the Metropolitan Opera and would arrive for their lessons in their Rolls Royces. Dello Joio was given a scholarship to Julliard and then went on to graduate studies there, ultimately deciding that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in church organ lofts. Instead he pursued a career as a composer, studying composition in 1941 with the great German composer Paul Hindemith at Yale. (Hindemith had emigrated to the US from Germany in 1940.) Hindemith encouraged Dello Joio to remember that his (that is, DJ’s) music was “lyrical by nature.” Dello Joio said that he hadn’t understood Hindemith’s statement at the time but realized later that he meant, “Don’t sacrifice necessarily to a system, go to yourself, what you hear. If it’s valid, and it’s good, put it down in your mind. Don’t say I have to do this because the system tells me to. No, that’s a mistake.” (This information is from the Dello Joio official website; you can read more about his life by going here.) Dello Joio went on to have an extremely successful career as a composer, with his latest work dating to 2003, five years before his death, when he was ninety.

How do the themes of light and darkness play out in the Requiem?

January 27, 2019May 9, 2016 by debisimons

Sun breaking through clouds

Sun breaking through clouds The meaning of the Requiem text, part 6:

Isn’t it interesting that the first creative act of God recorded in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, concerns light? “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen. 1:3 KJV). When we get to the last book of the Christian New Testament we see the same idea: “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Rev. 21:23 KJV). This bookending use of light imagery also plays out in the Requiem. Its very first line is: “Grant them eternal rest, Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them.” The title of the last section? That very same perpetual light, “Lux aerterna.” Just in case we didn’t get the drift, both “eternal” and “perpetual” are used.

Who Are the Thief and Michael in the Requiem?

August 29, 2018May 2, 2016 by debisimons

Archangel Michael defeating Satan The meaning of the Requiem text, part 5:

Last week I discussed Mary Magdalene, and she ended up taking over the entire post. You go, Mary! But time is hastening on, with our concert now less than three weeks away, so I must also hasten on. I’ll start out with a discussion of the “thief” who’s mentioned in the same stanza as Mary Magdalene, again, one character mentioned one time in the Requiem. An explanation of who this person is, though, gives us a window into many of the ideas presented in the text of this work. The relevant lines are:

You, who absolved Mary,
and listened to the thief,
give me hope also.

Who’s “Mary” in Mozart’s Requiem?

April 8, 2022April 25, 2016 by debisimons

Mary Magdalene looking toward Heaven The meaning of the the Requiem text, part 4.

Last week I wrote about animals in the Requiem. This week I’m concentrating on one person mentioned one time in the Requiem text. I guess I’m constitutionally unable to just go through the text line by line. You wouldn’t enjoy that anyway, would you? I’ve already talked about Abraham, David and the Sybils, so they’re covered. But that still leaves several other individuals or groups who should get an explanation, and that endeavor will take up this post and at least one more after that. In the “Recordare,” we have the lines:

Qui Mariam absolvisti
et latronem exaudisti
mihi quoque spem dedisti.

What’s the significance of the animals in the Requiem?

April 2, 2018April 18, 2016 by debisimons

The meaning of the Requiem text, part 3:

There are four different animals (by my count) mentioned in the Requiem. What’s their significance?

I’ll just go in order. The first two animals are sheep and goats, mentioned in the “Recordare” section sung by the quartet. “Recordare” means “Remember,” with the line as a whole reading “Remember, kind Jesus.” So here is the relevant section:

Why does Mozart keep talking about Abraham?

January 5, 2021April 11, 2016 by debisimons

Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael, Sarah, and Isaac The meaning of the Requiem text, part two:

Before I even get to David, Abraham, and the Sybils, I should probably mention the references in the very first section of the Requiem to Zion and Jerusalem: “You are praised, God, in Zion, and homage will be paid you in Jerusalem.” This line echoes the ideas in the New Testament book of Hebrews, “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly” (Hebrews 12:22 NIV). You can see that the words “Zion” and “Jerusalem” in these verses refer to literal places but have a deeper, spiritual meaning. The same can be said of the Requiem text.

The Meaning of the Requiem Text, Part One

January 27, 2019April 4, 2016 by debisimons

Yellow and orange star I wrote last week about the constraints Mozart worked with as he composed the Requiem. Starting with this post I’ll look at the text of the various sections, as many as I can squeeze in, and perhaps an attempt at times to draw a connection between the words and the music.

What does the title itself mean? “Rest.” The funeral mass as a whole is named for its first word, from the Latin “requies.”

How Does a Composer Compose?

January 27, 2019March 26, 2016 by debisimons

There’s a famous essay by Edgar Allan Poe titled “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which the poet and storyteller outlines what he says to be the method used in writing his famous poem, “The Raven.” I rather blush to say that I have taught about this piece in a high-school English class (hey, it was in the anthology) and taken it seriously, as indeed a quick Google search will show that most reviewers do.

The Requiem’s Mysterious Origin

January 27, 2019March 21, 2016 by debisimons

Who really commissioned Mozart’s Requiem, and who actually wrote it?

What a fantastically complicated story lies behind these two simple questions! All sorts of theories have been suggested: that Mozart thought the commission had come from the Underworld and that he was writing his own funeral music, that Antonio Salieri, Mozart’s musical rival, was behind the commission (and also behind Mozart’s death), and so on. We do have an actual anecdote, mentioned in several reputable Mozart biographies, that Mozart told his wife, Constanze, that he was thinking of death and didn’t believe he had much longer to live, that he felt that he was writing the requiem for himself, and that he was sure he had been poisoned. So Constanze took the score away from him for awhile until his spirits lifted. We have no concrete evidence that a) Mozart actually said this or b) he was actually being poisoned. Indeed, while there have been over 100 theories proposed as to the cause of his death, the most credible idea is that he died of a recurrence of rheumatic fever, a disease he had first contracted as a child.

A Charming Fable that Deserves More Fame

December 11, 2020March 16, 2016 by debisimons

Statue of Apollo

The secular cantata A God in Disguise by the Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson with lyrics by the poet Hjalmar Gullberg is a fabulous work that is far too little known here in America. There are two ideas about its background that I’d like to discuss in this post: the actual story behind the lyrics and world events that were unfolding at the time of its composition.