Network for New Music tackles Darwin (1st review)

Sometimes artistic synergies happen, but more often they don't. Here is a recent example of one gratifying exception:

Take an exhibit of Darwin material at a small, erudite museum, mix with young poets and musicians, add to an excellent new music ensemble, and what do you get? The expected result ought to be some illumination, perhaps even a revelation or two, about the complex nature of the theory of evolution. That this project in any way succeeds can be attributed to the reality that the central players— a museum director, a music director and a composer— are all ardent Darwinists.

Sue Ann Prince is, remarkably, the first curator of the museum of the American Philosophical Society since Benjamin Franklin founded the Society in 1743. Her mission has been to introduce the Society's spectacular collections to a larger audience via collaborations with contemporary artists, as is the case for the current exhibition, "Dialogues with Darwin." To augment the show, she has found an ideal partner in Linda Reichert, the artistic director of Network for New Music and a longtime advocate of bringing poets and composers together to create new works.

Thus was born "Dialogues with Darwin: The Poetry Project," which culminated with concerts last weekend that included six world premieres. Five of those works were by student composers, and the sixth, which comprised the program's entire second half, was a major new work by the Temple-based composer Maurice Wright, one of the aforementioned ardent Darwinists.

Three poems for five composers

Reichert and her Network for New Music colleagues wisely decided to select only three poems for the five young composers to set. Thus two of the poems were used twice, adding an interesting dramatic variety to the reflections on Darwinism.

Cort Day's poem, Megathere, Multiplexing in Primeval Flora, Opens Its Eyes, is a whimsical ode to an extinct giant sloth and the processes of natural selection that removed that species from the earth. In the setting by Daniel Nelson, the megathere is viewed as an oaf in need of opposing thumbs, a sort of cutesy mythical beast. But in the anxious music of Ian Munro, evolution becomes an unfeeling and inexorable juggernaut, conjuring the raw power of nature that so threatens those inclined to deny the validity of Darwin's theory.

Aboard the Beagle

Maurice Wright's Darwiniana is an ambitious multi-media work, with an operatic dramatic scope. It's in three sections that loosely follow Darwin's biography.

The first centers on his famous voyage on the HMS Beagle, where the basis for his theory of evolution was formed via observations of the South American flora and fauna. The middle movement is slow-paced, reflecting Darwin's domestic life, and the final section dances along with a cool, Stravinsky-like neo-classicism, before ending in a dirge marking the death of Darwin.

Wright employs two extra-musical devices in the work, with mixed success. Each section was introduced by a brief projection of computer-generated animation and audio. These bits of what Wright calls "visual music" are concise and stimulating but interrupted the flow of the narrative. It's as if a movie theater decided to stop the feature presentation midstream to show a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Darwin the unmusical?

A much better idea was to project selections from Darwin's own writing, which is itself wonderfully rhythmic and elegant (although he considered himself unmusical). Wright chose his text with great care and found the right corresponding tone in his music. For instance, the music sounds like a Bach chorale as we read of Darwin's heartbreak upon the death of his ten-year-old daughter— an ironic touch, given that this incident marked the end of Darwin's hope for the existence of a loving, omnipotent God.

Sue Ann Prince led a tour of the museum's small but fascinating exhibit as an auxiliary to the music, making for a full dose of Darwiniana. The music-making has passed, but you can still visit the museum's show and continue the essential conversation about an idea that forever changed the way we understand our world.♦


To read another review by Tom Purdom, click here.