Page 107 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

Hollywood came to use for crashing surf, sunsets, and moments of passionate truth, but we are distant enough from that era of early epic cinema to restore Bloch to his original message: faith unites all of us.
And to appreciate his timeless quest: how do you compose transcendence? How do you put a voice to epiphanies you can barely put a name to? How do you make people feel dependably every time what you have felt once in your life? How do you portray Saul’s revelation on his horse to a skeptical future?
Music is filled with examples of composers who have done this successfully. Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Aaron Jay Kernis’s musica celestis. John Luther Adams’s Four Thousand Holes. Verdi’s Requiem. Mozart’s Requiem. Fauré’s
Requiem. Arvo Pärt’s Salve Regina, his Tintinnabuli in Stabat Mater (really anything by Pärt), Mozart’s Alleluia, all of Mozart’s Magic Flute, where the young lovers have to run the gauntlet between their parents’ values in order to become themselves. Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga, Handel’s Ah, mio cor! (sung by Kožená), Mozart’s “Ruhe sanft.” The revelations go on. Music, at its heart, is a quest for the great unexpected mystical glories of sudden enlightenment.
So this is Bloch’s frenetic vision, his attempt to reach into the clouds and pull out lightning, to manifest divinity. His success lies in the prophetic hands of Julien and Caroline, in their ability to see past the music into the core of the world, to ascend to heaven.
2018 Summer Season 107