David Lang and Betty Olivero Look to ‘Song of Songs’ for Inspiration
By Rebecca Schmid
‘Song of Songs’ “Song of Songs” (Louth Contemporary Music Society)
“Song of Songs” is Available on iTunes
“Just your mouth. Just your love.” What begins with an a cappella trio in seemingly predictable harmony evolves into an intricate setting of a sacred song about the divine union of man and woman.
In this premiere recording of Just (After Song of Songs), David Lang has slightly adapted the language of the allegorical, Old Testament Song of Songs to emphasize attributes which the two people desire or wish to possess. A bass drum and plucked strings give each syllable earthly weight while the clear, immaculately blended female voices of Trio Mediaeval continue to praise from above. A viola, then a cello, crawl in slow counterpoint while a glockenspiel pings in the empty space.
Just is ideally paired with Betty Olivero’s En La Mar Hai Una Torre, also in its first recording. Her setting of a Sephardic folk song, whose words derive from the Song of Songs, similarly opens with the bare voices of Trio Mediaeval, this time in pleading, melismatic lines. The voices continue to circle around each other in atmospheric harmonies against the accompaniment of rippling concert harp (the virtuosic Cliona Doris), viola, cello and subtle percussive effects. This is music that demands close listening, but the recording’s masterful engineering captures the full range of textures.
Luciano Berio’s Naturale, the album’s second track, creates a more fatalist interaction. The recording of the Sicilian folk singer Peppino Celano urges the solo viola into dance-like, then more raw – even primitive – textures (expertly played by Garth Knox), only to end in a stand-off of machine-gun percussion and church bells which proverbially lay the vocalist down to die.
The dramaturgy provides an intriguing contrast with that of Olivero, a Berio student. If the somber viola lines which end the work seem to signify the end of an era, it wouldn’t be long before the next generation of composers found inspiration in ancient texts which have transcended so many cultural and geographical divides.
“Song of Songs”
Louth Contemporary Music Society | Released Oct. 2
