Leaving Paradise

Massaccio, The Expulsion

I wrote the poem below to keep pace with my students in my Milton course, who were creating poems, paintings, and pieces of music based on/working off their reading of Milton.

It's my way of putting a new spin on the ending of Paradise Lost (the last four lines of which are quoted as the epigraph).

It wasn't till after the course ended, on Sunday, that I realized it was not just about Adam and Eve leaving Paradise, it was also about me leaving this course on Paradise Lost and Milton.




Adam and Eve Walk Out of Paradise

The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

-- Milton, Paradise Lost

We left that evening, late, on foot.
The sun had set, but there was light
enough to see our way. We put
our faces east, to the coming night.

Looking back west, we saw the path
was guarded: angels watched us leave.
Who had arranged for all that wrath?
And why? To reinforce our grief?

To our surprise, the apple trees
had burst in bloom like white-hot balls
of flame against the darkening sky.
Some petals had begun to fall.

We had no clue of where to go,
but, really, we thought, how hard
could exile be? there was a road,
there were the trees, the earth, the stars.

We knew so little then, and yet,
the only things that mattered were
that we were there; that something lay ahead;
that nothing, then or now, was sure.

Admissions: Warning: spoilers and harsh critique

The supposedly 'feel-good' film Admissions (directed by Paul Weitz, with Tina Fey as Princeton admissions director Portia Nathan) seemed to me a gratuitous set of cruelties perpetrated on any woman unfortunate enough to be in camera's range. (Read on with spoilers...)

Space and the Vespers of 1610

 This post is motivated by the spectacular Vespers performance by the Green Mountain Project, Jolie Greenleaf, artistic director, and Scott Metcalfe, music director. I heard them in Cambridge, Mass., but they also sang in New York City. Here is the New York Times review by CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM.

Monteverdi apparently wrote his Vespers to get out of Mantua—some say, to get a job in Rome, some think in Venice.

He wanted some breathing room, literally: Mantua was unhealthy, surrounded by stagnant water, and becoming too provincial for Monteverdi. Working for the Duke, his primary musical space would have been the beautifully decorated but small assembly rooms in the duke's palaces.

So one might well imagine that space was on his mind as he thought about his musical portfolio.

What spaces might he have thought about? In Rome, surely, the Sistine Chapel. As the Papal chapel, that would not have been the right space for the Vespers, but Monteverdi included a more appropriate piece in his dossier publication, the Mass for six unaccompanied voices, in the conservative musical tradition favored by the Pope. Not as exciting as the Vespers  — or as flamboyant as Michelangelo's ceiling!— but safe and elegant.


And also in Rome, surely St. Peter's would have come to mind — vast, grand, not so much solemn as stirring. It would have been a great place for Monteverdi's newly theatrical music to resonate in.




But no job surfaced for Monteverdi in Rome. He did end up, though, in one of the greatest spaces of Italy for music: Saint Mark's in Venice. And for that acoustically and historically resonant space, the Vespers were a perfect job-application piece. The space, like the music, was versatile and complicated: capable of big gestures and intimacies alike.


Here is a clip of part of the Vespers, starting at the tenor solo, "Nigra Sum," performed in Saint Mark's (Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner). You can hear the wonderful reverb that supports the tenor and the theorbo. Added bonus: you can see some of the gorgeous mosaics. And notice one of the many ways Monteverdi has written space into the music: the tenor sings "Surge" -- "get up!"—on a repeated rising scale. Vertical space is right there in our ears!


More about this wonderful piece in another post!

Messiah as theater

I almost didn't go to Apollo's Fire's Messiah this Christmas. I get tired of the endless repetitions of the Christmas section, which so debilitates the power of this complicated and not altogether holiday-friendly oratorio. But Cleveland Classical asked me to review it, so we went.

We loved it. The performance had integrity and drama. Every part seemed rethought for the moment. And beautifully performed. Photo of Apollo's Fire by Roger Mastroianni.

As usual, here's my review. If you like it, I hope you'll subscribe to ClevelandClassical.com.

One of the stars was the soprano Meredith Hall, a wonderful convincing and utterly musical singer. Here's a clip from her website of her singing "Rejoice greatly" from the Messiah.

Another star was the wonderful baroque trumpeter Josh Cohen. Here's him playing "The trumpet shall sound" with another group: