Joy for the Soul in Music and Vision 29 settembre

Joy for the Soul

GIUSEPPE PENNISI visits
Sagra Musicale Umbra

As mentioned in previous years' coverage (eg 'To the Glory of God', 14 September 2011), Sagra Musicale Umbra is the oldest music festival in Italy (literally 'A Local Feast'). It has special features when compared with any other European festival, and provides a ten day journey (15-25 September 2013) through an entire region where it combines the beauty of landscape, monuments and art with few parallels anywhere. Another feature is the very strong local participation, being financed almost entirely locally (and privately). Private estates are open to the general audience for concerts and, sometimes, owners offer bountiful buffet dinners when the musical entertainment has finished. The integration between music, on the one hand, and various forms of visual art, on the other, has always been an essential element.
Traditionally, the Sagra Musicale Umbra is a festival of 'spiritual' music. This does not mean that it is a festival of religious, sacred or Roman Catholic music. The intention is to offer, in St Francis' region, music dealing with themes that talk to the soul. The 2010 edition was named Pilgrimages of the Soul because the nine days of concerts were in nine different localities. In 2011 the name was From the old world to the new -- a tribute to Francesco Siciliani (for fifty years musical director and the real driver of the Sagra). The 2012 edition was called Angels and Demons -- a clear confrontation. This year the title, and the main theme, is Transfiguration.
I visited the Sagra for three days and could get a sample and a taste of its activities. Here I review three concerts. In a later article, two offerings of operatic music. Of the three concerts, the most important (especially for an international audience) was the 21 September 2013 afternoon celebration of his own eightieth birthday by a towering figure of contemporary music, Krzysztof Penderecki. The Polish composer and director, a close friend of both Lech Walesa and Karol Wojtyla, became so internationally known since the mid-Sixties that he could afford considerable freedom to work abroad. He is a practicing devout Roman Catholic and decided that his birthday concert would be held in a place normally not accessible to either the general public or tourists: the cloister of St Francis Basilica. Penderecki is a living monument to contemporary music in a long journey through the second half of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty first century. He composed choral works and music for film, stage and theatre. More fundamentally, he witnessed the decline of the Second Viennese School (the twelve note row system) and of the complex Darmstadt and IRCAM experiments, arriving at a pluralistic post-romantic musical language with echoes of baroque and even ancient music.

Krzysztof Penderecki at Sagra Musicale Umbra. Photo © 2013 Adriano Scognamillo. Click on the image for higher resolution

In Assisi, he conducted the Perugia Chamber Orchestra in a concert where the first part included his own music (Serenata for String Orchestra of 1997, the Adagietto from the 1978 opera 'Paradise Lost' and his Sinfonietta No 2, written in 2006). The second part offered Antonín Dvořák's Serenata in E major, Dvořák being one of the composers which Penderecki studied most carefully. Finally, a surprise: the Ciaccona for Papa Giovanni.

Krzysztof Penderecki conducting the Perugia Chamber Orchestra at Assisi. Photo © 2013 Adriano Scognamillo. Click on the image for higher resolution

The Perugia ensemble played very well under Penderecki's baton, also because the compositions chosen were not among his most complex. In the Serenata, the emphasis is on the severe Passacaglia. The Adagietto is the intermezzo of the second act of Paradise Lost; it starts like an elegy, increasingly tormented by the insidious snake. The Sinfonietta No 2 is a juxtaposition of four very different movements (played without any pauses) with reference also to Gustav Mahler's music. Dvořák's Serenata is a homage to his own country's folk music. The Ciaccona for Papa Giovanni was engrossing and moving.
Nearly an hour from Assisi is the small village of San Gemini, with a well-known source of mineral water and a Roman Abbey dating back some thousand years. In the Abbey at 9pm on the evening of 21 September, the German Ensemble Amarcord (Wolfram and Martin Lattke, Frank Ozimek, Daniel Knaut and Holker Krause) travelled, without any instrumental support, from the Middle Ages to contemporary religious music: Gregorian chant, vocal pieces by Hildegard von Bingen, Thomas Tallis, Sixt Dietrich, Pierre de la Rue until John Tavener and Marcus Botho Ludwig. The listeners experienced a strong feeling of unity and continuity across the centuries and between the different kinds (Roman Catholic, Lutheran) of Christian music.

The German ensemble Amarcord performing at Sagra Musicale Umbra. Photo © 2013 Adriano Scognamillo. Click on the image for higher resolution

A final jewel: on the afternoon of 22 September in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Miracles in Castel Rigone, Palestrina's In Festo Transfigurationis Domini, the old liturgy of Transfiguration Day, was performed by La Stagione Armonica Chorus directed by Sergio Balestracci.

Members of La Stagione Armonica choir performing at Castel Rigone. Photo © 2013 Adriano Scognamillo. Click on the image for higher resolution

Joy for the soul.
Copyright © 29 September 2013 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy