Queen Elizabeth
Hall
Stabat
mater dolorosa (London
premiere)
BBC Singers
London Sinfonietta
Sound Intermedia
Ilan Volkov (conductor)
James Dillon’s ‘cantata’ –
his own description – Stabat mater
dolorosa had its first performance at last November’s Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival; this was its London premiere. Co-commissioned by
the HCMF, BBC Radio 3, and Casa da Musica, Porto, it is quite unlike any ‘setting’
of the poem I have heard, despite the surprising direct quotation from
Pergolesi that surfaces some way through its hour-and-a-quarter duration. Why
the inverted commas? Only some of the poem is set; apparently, Dillon went so
far as he felt able and then stopped. Perhaps more importantly, the text is not
always readily audible; more than once, I thought of Nono’s Il canto sospeso, and indeed of
Stockhausen’s (misplaced?) criticism of it in Die Reihe: the effect seemed somewhere between Nono’s intention and
Stockhausen’s reception, albeit with a far greater sense of restraint. However,
there were times when the text was
readily audible, for which considerable praise should be offered to the BBC
Singers.
The background ‘chatter’ of
ancillary texts is deliberately not perceptible in its detail, presenting an
interesting comparison and indeed synergy with the relatively sparing use of
electronics. Picasso’s idea of the ‘weeping woman’ melds with the philosopher
Julia Kristeva’s Héretique de l’amour,
a text in which she considers the Stabat
mater in relation to her experience of child birth and her thoughts upon
the Virgin Birth. (I am relying on Dillon for that information, since I have yet
to read any Kristeva.) Rilke’s Visions of
Christ and Donne’s A Valediction of
Weeping are also present. We only know that because we are told. Does that
matter? I am instinctively suspicious (reactionary that I am?) of conceptual
art, but in this case, I really could see no harm, nor could I hear it, in a
little background – in more than one sense. The idea of a ‘canonical’ text, a
term Dillon used more than once in a brief post-concert discussion, being
mediated by later writing is after all difficult to avoid in any non-fundamentalist
consideration of texts as developing works.
The score really does, rather
to my surprise, come across as a reimagining of a Baroque cantata. One senses
something akin to ritornello form and sub-divisions not entirely dissimilar to
those of the old ‘cantata mass’. (Perhaps incongruously, perhaps not, it was
Haydn’s post-Baroque Missa
Cellensis in honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariae
that sprang to my mind both during and after the event.) Picasso’s ‘weeping
machine’ and what one might think of its predecessors in earlier Spanish painters
such as Murillo also featured strongly in my initial response. To quote the
composer, whom I read afterwards, ‘Picasso’s strange but fascinating metaphor
of a “weeping machine” becomes a central image in the work, whereby I cast the
mechanics of mourning as a slow machine, a music which unfolds in slow motion.’
That ‘slow motion’ might take some getting used to, but actually one’s ears
adjust – or at least mine did – reasonably quickly. There are moments, passages
of considerable beauty, not entirely unlike Baroque obbligati. Various
instrumentalists from the splendid London Sinfonietta took their opportunities
to shine, without any hint of standing out too boldly. Alastair Mackie’s
trumpet lingered especially in the memory. The caesuras challenged too, but
productively: there still seemed to be an overarching modernist structure,
rather than a mere post-modernist assemblage for us to make of what we would.
The work clearly requires more than a single listening, so I am
reluctant to say much more, but I have little doubt that such listening would
be well rewarded. Insofar as I could tell, Ilan Volkov directed his forces with
remarkable sympathy and understanding. The London Sinfonietta has long excelled
in such repertoire; long may that excellence continue.
