The Fredösphere

Most of the music Tan Dun wrote for his Water Passion After St. Matthew gives you no hint that Bach was a brooding presence during its creation.  Yet how could the Leapin' Lord of Leipzig not be?  The Internationale Bachakademie in Stuttgart chose to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach's death with a commission for a new Passion in English -- and they chose Tan Dun to be the composer, an astonishing and counter-intuitive choice.

This music has almost no counterpoint.  There's not much even in the way of chords.  Tan Dun's mastery is displayed in his ability to create rich textures of sound through new "instruments" (basins of water, soda bottles, smooth-contoured stones, a water phone -- what the heck is that?).  This is music qua movie sound effects.  This is not my music.  Or should not be.

What fascinates me is what a gutsy project this is.  Tan Dun dares to write a piece to stand next to Bach's St. Matthew Passion.  He also dares to express the central drama of the Christian gospel -- this from the point of view of someone from a non-Christian culture, indeed a culture of hostility to all religion.  In the liner notes to the CD say that, thanks to the Cultural Revolution, his first contact with Bach's music, and through it, Christianity, came only when he had reached his 20th birthday.  "Even with virtually no experience of Bach or Christianity, he understood that this was music of hope and profound faith."

So, what's with the water metaphor?  If this were a traditional Passion, which restricts itself to the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the metaphor would be a stretch.  Tan Dun chose to include the resurrection and even Christ's baptism and temptation, and these events justify the use of water as the sign of life, especially new life, makes sense.  The work begins and ends with the faint sounds of pouring water.

I usually don't have enough patience for this kind of music.  (If most of the 20th century's music can be called Wrong Note Modernism, then this is part of a later, percussion-heavy tradition we can call No Note Modernism.)  Tan Dun's remarkable dramatic sense maintains my interest.  It's sense of forward propulsion is so strong, I don't need the visuals.  This guy should be writing movie soundtracks -- I bet he would be great!

Satan's lines are sung by a woman.  Did Tan Dun steal the idea from Mel Gibson, or vice versa?  No, they both stole it from me!  In the 1980s I wrote a cantata on the temptation of Jesus for my senior composition recital.  I decided Satan's lines would be sung by a women's duet.  I thought the quasi-androgyny was appropriate (I guess I'm in good company).  Also, using two voices dilutes the sense of identity, which frankly wasn't appropriate in my cantata, but does reference the idea of demon possession, thereby lending a bit of creepiness to it.  Thank goodness I never thought to run their voices through a ring modulator.

In case I didn't say it earlier:  this Water Passion is fascinating, weird, compelling music.  The composer's vision is bold, his musical language is novel, but his message remains rooted in orthodoxy.  It is a remarkable achievement, and a generous gift.