They say there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts. Yet our understanding and experience of love is often non-schematic, making it difficult to reach a consensus. Carl Orff and Eric Whitacre agree that love is described in radically different ways and without convention. In the process, we learn what different shades it can take on.
In Five Hebrew Love Songs, for example, everything is played out between lyrical subtleties, transience and discretion. Delicate, often pastel colours and luminous harmonies reign supreme. Whitacre places love in five small musical tableaux, somewhat reminiscent of postcard windows that preserve important, though seemingly insignificant, moments. He captures the texts of short poems, which the composer received from his partner, Hila Plitmann, in extremely private sounds – along with personal memories: gestures, words or places (at the beginning of ‘Éyze Shéleg!’ one hears an imitation of the ringing of bells from a cathedral familiar to the couple). This creates a kind of emotional kaleidoscope, in which are intertwined nostalgia and longing, but also tenderness, joy and passion.
Love in Orff’s Catulli carmina, meanwhile, is a spectacle of passion, but the sensual desire is accompanied by screams, loud laughter, an ecstatic rush and an almost constant, ritualistic rumbling. The Roman poet Catullus, whose verses served as the basis for these theatrical games, at times evokes the delight of ecstasy and the heat of desire, and at other times leads us through the drama of falling in love – with powerlessness, anger, impulsive jealousy and reproaches. The music – full of archaisms, folklore and raw primitivism – fuels this tension and drives the action forward until the beautiful emotion reaches its limit. Catullus’ feelings for the unfaithful Lesbia die, and the hero-poet seems to die with them. This is a completely different understanding of the promise of eternal love…
And yet the works converge. They similarly tell the truth and deal with the great power of emotion. They show that both wildness and intimacy can be powerful; that both screams and whispers are intense.
Piotr Mika (Ruch Muzyczny)
