Distinguished Concerts International - New York

Facing the Music of 9/11

by Jay Nordlinger

September 13, 2011

After 9/11, there were several memorial concerts here in New York. Then, for the next few years, there were many, many "9/11 pieces"-compositions "about" 9/11 or having to do with 9/11 in some way. This month, there are, or have been, 10th anniversary concerts. And we have yet more 9/11 pieces.

Allow me a couple of memories, specifically of Leontyne Price. In the days and weeks following 9/11, the great soprano came out of retirement to sing twice. The first time was at a memorial concert in Carnegie Hall. She sang "This Little Light o' Mine"-which she has always announced as her mother's favorite spiritual-and "America the Beautiful." The second time was in Avery Fisher Hall, at the annual Richard Tucker gala. She sang "God Bless America."

I remember when she went up for her final high B flat. She was really spinnin' it, in that incomparable Price style. And the people around me began to roar. I was furious, thinking, "This is the last note I will ever hear Leontyne sing, live, and they are drowning it out." Oh, well.

The 9/11 pieces came fast and furious-hundreds of them. This was a full-blown genre, the 9/11 piece. I think they petered out in about 2004. Almost all of these pieces were instantly forgettable, but, to be fair, that is true of new pieces in general.

In the early going, there were pieces written before 9/11 that were passed off as 9/11 pieces. Let me illustrate what I mean. On commission from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, William Bolcom wrote his Symphony No. 7. It is a good piece, in my view-not instantly forgettable. The composer said, "Sometime in the summer of 2001, I felt a great, inexplicable need to interpose a very slow, mournful Interlude" between movements. He continued, "The need for such a lamentation would appear to all of us the following September... I report this only because I've found that so many other artists felt the same mysterious, prescient dread as I did..."

Make of that what you will.

Here is a fact that many people find very hard to swallow: Music without words means nothing, absolutely nothing (with a few exceptions). The composer may intend a meaning, and a listener can invent a meaning, in his head. But this is strictly personal.

John Corigliano can call his Symphony No. 1 his "AIDS symphony" till the cows come home, but the music communicates nothing of the kind. After writing the symphony, Corigliano drew from it a choral piece, Of Rage and Remembrance-that is another matter. Peter Maxwell Davies announced that his String Quartet No. 3 was his "reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq." Fine, but you'd never know it without that announcement: It's just a string quartet (and a good one).

Another composer, Ned Rorem, once put it to me this way: "A piece without a text, without a vocal line, can't mean detailed things like Tuesday, butter or yellow, and it can't even mean general things like death or love or the weather, although a timpani roll can sound like thunder, and certain conventions about love come out of Wagner."

But again, music with words is a different ballgame. And on Sept. 10 of this year, the New York Philharmonic performed a piece with words in a concert of "remembrance and renewal." The concert was free to the public. And the piece was one of the greatest we know: Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the "Resurrection."

The next day, there was a different concert, also in Avery Fisher Hall. This one was staged by a group called Distinguished Concerts International New York. The bill of fare included a 9/11 piece composed by René Clausen in 2003. Clausen is a choir conductor and professor at Concordia College in Minnesota.

His 9/11 piece is Memorial, an oratorio. It has four sections, "September Morning," "The Attack," "Prayers" and "Petitions." The text, or texts, are ecumenical, in the modern fashion: a Buddhist meditation, a verse from Psalms, etc. That verse from Psalms is sung in Hebrew, Latin, English and Arabic. Clausen says that his hope is to "find a common ground of higher being."

...

At the end of this month, the New York Philharmonic will perform a new work. This is "the first of several world premieres that the Philharmonic has on tap for the 2011-12 season," which, to me, sounds as much like a warning as a promise. The work in question is One Sweet Morning, by the aforementioned John Corigliano. It has words, and is indeed a song cycle. It is also a 9/11 piece, which the Philharmonic specifically commissioned. Corigliano says that his piece reflects the hope that war may someday end.

Finally, consider a new work on CD: Steve Reich's WTC 9/11 (on Nonesuch, this composer's longtime label). The CD cover shows the horrible black-gray cloud the towers made. The piece is for three string quartets and "pre-recorded voices." We hear, for example, chatter from NORAD: "They're goin' the wrong way . . . No contact with the pilot whatsoever."

Reich is a very, very skillful guy. But why anybody would want to relive 9/11, so starkly, is a little beyond me. The piece is exploitative to the core. That Reich is so skillful makes the result all the more awful-and "awful" can be a term of praise.

Years ago, I attended a concert that featured a new work, a Holocaust piece. I was dreading this piece, because I think just about all Holocaust pieces stink: They are manipulative, empty, unhelpful, wrongly disturbing, inadequate-I could go on. But this particular piece I liked. I wish I could remember the composer's name so I could credit her. I spoke to her after, admitting that I had not looked forward to hearing her piece. She knew exactly what I meant, and seemed touched by my congratulations.

Perhaps I will welcome a 9/11 piece one day? As soon as later this month, at the Philharmonic? That would be nice.