I've written before at this blog about Adam Guettel's extraordinary work, the theatrical song cycle "Myths and Hymns." Yet I thought I'd lost forever the first piece I wrote about it, years ago in The Arizona Republic.
Thanks to a browse through the Internet, the lost story is found, and reprinted below. The site where I found it -- www.greenstone.org -- had the date right (May 19, 1999) but the publication wrong. It claimed the article had appeared in The New York Times.
I've penned paeans nearly as exultant as this one and wished, later on, that I had modified my rapture, so to speak. Not here. I meant and still mean every word. "Myths and Hymns" is a masterpiece, deserving of much greater exposure. If you don't know it yet it, you have ahead of you one of the most mesmerizing hours of your life:
In a time when everything's been done, the only possible artistic shocks will issue from pure talent burning its own, strange light.
Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for a big shock.
Adam Guettel's ``Myths and Hymns'' is a theatrical song cycle that burrows deep into the human psyche and finds all sorts of politically incorrect things there. It's an unsettling spiritual quest shaped as a series of song experiences of astonishing beauty.
I have a special attachment to this work. After a brief telephone interview last year with Guettel regarding his earlier musical, ``Floyd Collins,'' he invited me to the production of his latest, ``Saturn Returns,'' at the Public Theatre in New York. It turned out that the show's opening preview coincided with one of only four nights I planned to spend in New York for all of 1998.
So I went. But I wasn't prepared for what I was about to hear.
One night in a bookstore, Guettel had discovered that a volume of ancient Greek myths and a 19th-century Protestant hymnal were saying the same things. Icarus sought to rise heavenward, and so did Christians. Pegasus threw its rider for hubris; prideful Christians were thrown down, as well.
In response to this insight, Guettel did what any theatrical songwriter would have to do: write songs. The lyrics of some he adapted from the hymns. Others he wrote himself based on the myths, and for two humorous numbers he asked lyricist Ellen Fitzhugh to do the verbal honors. He set the whole to music as a themed song cycle _ a group of songs with an implied central character and point of view, exploring an idea.
``Saturn Returns'' had no dialogue and was minimally staged. It relied solely upon the songs to tell the story of a soulful search and its intersection with two great streams of thought: Greek mythology and Christian theology.
The title originated in a quote from a Renaissance priest and neo-Platonist, Marcilio Ficino: ``Very often, therefore, in human affairs we are subject to Saturn, through idleness, solitude or strength, through Theology and more secret philosophy, through superstition, Magic, agriculture and through sadness.''
Obviously, this wasn't your average pop musical.
Now, with its title changed to ``Myths and Hymns'' (a mistake in my opinion, the new title being too literal), this cycle is out on a Nonesuch CD that captures all of the urgency and a great deal of the excitement I remember from that first night. Many of the Public's cast members are included, although the biggest change is that Guettel himself now sings the part of the central protagonist. He is very expressive, very capable. Musical theater composers are not supposed to be able to sing this well, but Guettel does.
Making guest appearances on the disc are Mandy Patinkin, who sings a hilarious Sisyphus song (this Sisyphus is a dogged pragmatist who believes in try, try again to the point of being a fool); Billy Porter, who sings on two tracks; and ``Ragtime'' star Audra MacDonald, who sings the buzzing part of the gadfly who bites Pegasus.
The score is complexly beautiful, with chiseled lyrics and music distinguished by the sort of subtle harmonic changes that are rare in contemporary pop music. It ``isn't'' contemporary pop music, of course; it's a musical theater piece. But it has a contemporary feeling, and here and there it salutes such genres as gospel and country.
Without a plot or character-continuity, the themes of ``Myths and Hymns'' take a while to spin out and to cohere. The following is one possible interpretation.
The protagonist finds himself in the throes of Saturn:
``I don't know from where the hunger springs,
``But that it's there and that it sings of someplace far away.''
He longs to be lifted up ``like Icarus.'' Suddenly, he becomes the demigod who flew too close to the sun against his father's advice.
The songs of the myths alternate with the hymns, each pursuing the idea of transcendance. But they follow different courses. The myths teach lessons about tragedy. The hymns touch on tragedy, but promise a happiness at the end, a ``gathering of the faithful,'' with ``angel bands'' by a ``crystal sea.'' None of this is touched by irony. The longings of the hymns are taken as seriously as the lessons of the myths.
If the protagonist is in spiritual agony, what was its genesis? This is supplied by the most controversial song of the score, ``Come to Jesus.'' The protagonist has fathered a child that has been aborted. In an unflinching look at the emotional ramifications of abortion, this duet _ ``an entire play in six minutes,'' as playwright Alfred Uhry notes in the CD booklet _ Guettel makes human an experience that is nearly always frozen in the jargon of issue-oriented journalism. (The song caused audible gasps at the Public the night I was there.)
The protagonist has been in love. He has been Leander swimming to Hero's lighthouse. And like Leander, he is now lost in the tide of love. In love, of course, death seems like nothing: ``Even if I drown here inside this wave . . . My loving you was meant to be.''
Death's reality has now come crashing back. At the end of ``Come to Jesus,'' the couple attempt to crown their decision to abort their child with a traditional ``Amen,'' but in one of the most chilling theatricalisms I've ever heard, they cannot complete the cadence and fade out on ``Ah . . .''
The protagonist moves on. He is surrounded by the happy sounds of the hymns as the celebrants approach their promised land: ``There's a shout in the camp for the Lord is here.'' He cannot be one of them. He has opted to scratch out his own salvation. And in ``Awaiting You,'' the single most haunting song of the set, the protagonist promises he will wait for God in his own way, armed with plenty of questions about life's injustices (``But what about the child that cannot breathe, or the gentle sage who won't see the age of 32?'') yet tinglingly alive with the awareness of his own need for a noble father _ a knowledge Icarus suppressed to his great regret.
As the joyous hymn singers intone their arrival in the ``heavenly land'' where ``everybody likes everybody,'' the protagonist briefly joins them. It is all too easy, however, and in the face of existence's infinite capacity for tragedy, a little silly.
In a sudden rush, the protagonist sees that to be saved is to know who you are:
``I am the rise of Icarus. I am the fall from Pegasus. I am the lost Leander in the tide. . . . I am Saturn purified. Once around the sun and now at last I see it! This is what I am.''
He accepts the ``hollow and the burn'' inside him as ``an opening, a passageway to guide me home.'' The sound of an ``Amen'' cadence begins once more. This time, it resolves.
- Kenneth LaFave
While this a blog, I'm not entirely sure I'm a blogger. A blogger, evidence suggests, is someone who posts entries almost every day, or at least every week, creating a kind of online diary. I tend to go for long periods of time without posting anything, only to return with accumulated Things To Say. This time, I've been away two months. Just how many Things To Say I'll have to say remains to be seen. But let's start with this:
Classical music criticism continues to disappear from American newspapers. Great joy there was recently when The Washington Post deigned to hire a fulltime classical music critic - the perceptive and thoughtful Anne Midgette - when my own response was, "How on earth could the Post even consider not having a classical music critic?" Meanwhile, critics at The Kansas City Star and The Miami Herald were laid off. It's part of a bigger trend toward getting rid of arts criticism of every kind. Here in Phoenix, Chris Page of the East Valley Tribune, one of only two theater critics with regular bylines in Phoenix daily newspapers, was laid off in April. In May, he committed suicide.
In the middle of this, the worst downtrend in the history of American arts criticism, there’s been a great deal of talk about the Internet and its role. Sides have been taken up by those who find the myriad opinions offered on the Web by non-professionals a good thing, and those who don’t. At the website of the National Arts Journalism Program the other day, blogger Doug McLennan voiced support for the Internet’s influence in the form of a response to an article in the Financial Times by veteran critic Martin Bernheimer, who objected to it. You can find McLennan’s blog here: http://www.najp.org/articles/
I read McLennan’s blog as a defense of mere opinion as against informed observation, and posted the following commentary:
“You equate criticism with opinion. Is that all it is? If so, then surely you are right to say that more is better. Better 300,000 opinions than only five or six.
“But what if criticism isn't opinion? I was classical music critic for The Kansas City Star (1987-1990), the Phoenix Gazette (1990-94) and The Arizona Republic (1994-2005, when I was ushered out the door because I refused to write about Janet Jackson's nipple). When I wrote a review, I did not indulge in ‘opinion.’ Opinion-as-criticism is just reaction, and reaction is for hacks. Genuine criticism 1) presents context, 2) relates experience and 3) conveys perspective.
“For instance, a performance of a Shostakovich symphony might give the political/artistic background of the work, tell the reader how the performance went (this is not opinion, a performance is a concrete thing) and then compare that experience with what the critic knows of the written score (again, not a matter of opinion) and with previous performances of the work and/or the orchestra. Was the conductor, whom you found suited to Richard Strauss' bourgeois comforts two weeks ago, up to the sardonic wit of Shostakovich last night? This is no more opinion than it is for a sports writer to say that pitcher X has a great fastball but his change-up's going to get him in trouble against left-handed hitters. It's a matter of experience, knowledge and observation. Real arts criticism is as fact-based as science writing. I assume that those in charge at the National Arts Journalism Program are aware of this.
“Anyone who wants criticism to thrive again must begin by chucking the canard of criticism-equals-opinion out the window. To champion such a babyish simplicity only underscores the anti-intellectual state of current American journalism.”
Was my tone a little harsh? Oh my, yes. That said, though, I have to admit I’m tired of the assumption that criticism and opinion are one and the same. And it concerns me to hear it from people who ought to know better – editors, publishers, even critics.
The problem with opinion is that it is a tyrant. It needs no justification, no facts to bear it up, no reason of any sort, and it demands to be taken seriously despite all these lacks. The only thing it requires is access. In the old days, the worst print critics hid behind the “it’s my opinion” shibboleth (and some remaining wrecks of critics still do!) to excuse their badly written, prejudiced and out-of-context reviews. Now, tens of thousands people do the same thing, because of increased access via the Internet. How is this better?
I read an interview recently with some blogger who maintains a drama site but refuses to review productions of Chekhov or Pinter because he doesn’t like their work. I suppose some people would say that’s perfectly legitimate, since all opinions are of equal importance. Personally, I would say that any so-called “drama critic” with no taste for Chekhov and Pinter is a fraud. Of course, that’s just my opinion.
- Kenneth LaFave