Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Collage New Music -- Edward Cohen Memorial Concert

This concert was at MIT's Killian Hall, Sunday, February 14, 2016. Collage New Music was conducted by David Hoose.

From the program notes, I read that Edward Cohen was a beloved music professor and composer at MIT's Music department. These memorial concerts have been going on for several years. He sounds like a lovely, talented, and inspiring man. His own piece, Elegy, was part of the program, and I enjoyed it. The soprano Nina Guo beautifully sang the lines, from the poems Eurydice and Lyda, by Hilda Doolittle. It must have been difficult to sing these lines, with the notes and pitches doing all those unexpected things, but she did it very well.

I was vaguely aware in college of a poet named "H.D.", but I don't recall much about her work. Re-reading her poems from the concert, I found that they need lots of re-reading. At least for me. I'm not sure I find her accessible, yet I can hear a distinct wistful voice there.

She had an interesting life. Here is a bio on her:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/h-d

In the program was a suite of songs by Peter Child, based on poems by the British 19th century poet John Clare. I liked the music, and I had an immediate liking for Clare -- I'd like to get some of his poetry. I found his work accessible and moving. Some of his lines have a strange power, such as these from the poem "I Am":

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest -- that I loved the best --
Are strange -- nay, rather stranger than the rest.

Wow. Vast shipwreck of my life's esteems. A line like that could upend your day. What a sad life he had. He surely deserves to be read today. So it was good to have both of those poets, and the contrast between them, providing the texts for some of the music of Sunday's concert.

What a wonderful concert that was. With our friends, we talked about some of the oddities of new music, how it was a very academic-looking crowd in Killian Hall. Here we had Collage NEW Music in 2016 conducted by a silver-haired David Hoose, performing music by 19th century and early 20th century poets, for an audience of mostly over 50ish types. I really enjoyed it.