Lang: Little Match Girl Passion

Lang: Little Match Girl Passion

Lang: Little Match Girl Passion
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Performer: Theatre of Voices
Performer: Ars Nova Copenhagen
Composer: Lang
Conductor: Hillier
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Hybrid SACD - DSD, Import
CD Release Date: 2009-06-09
Music Label: Harmonia Mundi

Free Music Notes for Lang: Little Match Girl Passion

Free Music Review: Outstanding, original, breathtaking, subtle, powerful
Hit: 5 Stars

This CD is one of my most prized in my collection of over a 1000. No wonder it won the Pulitzer. Take the ringing overtones of Arvo Part's tintinnabulism and blend with Robert Ashley's unique and beautiful contemporary opera works such as Improvement and you begin to understand what might have influenced Lang to compose this masterpiece. Indeed this is a modern day masterpiece.


"Tintinnabuli (singular. tintinnabulum) (from the Latin tinnabulae, of bells) is a compositional style created by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Pärt first introduced this new style in two works: Für Alina (1976) and Spiegel Im Spiegel (1978). This simple style was influenced by the composer's mystical experiences with chant music. Musically, Pärt's tintinnabular music is characterized by two types of voices, the first of which (dubbed the "tintinnabular voice") arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion. The works often have a slow and meditative tempo, and a minimalist approach to both notation and performance." This characterization is excerpted from Wikipedia. I remember the jacket notes from Tabula Rasa of tintinnabulum emphasizing the ringing overtones of bells implied (but not explicit) in the music. Listen to Little Match Girl and see if you can glimpse this notion here as well, but of course in Lang's work the overtones are explicit, but nevertheless elevating.Tabula Rasa

Listen to Mr. George Payne on Robert Ashley's Improvement Opera CD to see what I mean for parallels with this modern opera. Of course the entire opera by Ashley has ideas that might have influenced Lang.Robert Ashley: Improvement

These are two streams of music that run through my mind when I first listened to Little Match Girl. Whether they actually influenced Lang or not is not the point. The point is to have a quiet listen to this remarkable work and if possible share it. Oh, and be SURE to finish the entire work--some of the most powerful and surprising movements are toward the end.

In any case, don't think "Bang on a Can."! And if you like this work, be sure to enter the world of Part and Ashley as well.




Lang: Little Match Girl Passion Poster

Co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall especially for Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices, David Lang's The Little Match Girl Passion was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Setting Hans Christian Andersen's fable in the format of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Lang elevates the suffering of the little match girl with poignant, evocative music. Lang's piece is scored for four voices and a few percussion instruments, played by the singers. They sing the sad story of a little girl who freezes to death selling matches on the street during a cold winter's night. In notes Lang wrote to accompany the Carnegie Hall premiere last October, he says he was drawn to Andersen's story because of how opposite aspects of the plot played off each other. 'The girl's bitter present is locked together with the sweetness of her past memories, ' Lang says. 'Her poverty is always suffused with her hopefulness. There's a kind of naive equilibrium between suffering and hope.'

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