Revealed in Stone

Program Note

Although the poetry of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is not nearly as well known to the public as his sculpture, painting and architecture, it was an important facet of his creative life and appears to have been a passionate and somewhat private secondary form of expression for the artist (he was unpublished during his lifetime, and many of the poems were gifts to friends). He wrote over three hundred poems, many of which utilized imagery or metaphors from his primary medium of marble sculpture. Fragments of verse can be found in Michelangelo's sketchbooks, scribbled on the same pages as studies for his masterpieces, showing that these two disparate art forms were complementary or intimately related in his mind.

The selections in this cycle center around a few of the most prevalent and intriguing themes in Michelangelo's repertoire: time, death, and the immortalizing power of art; the artist's “concetto” (conception or idea) and the perfection of its realization; the reflection of the artist's self in his creations; the tension between hiding and revealing, which relates to the subtractive process of marble sculpture; and a yearning for spiritual release, or elevation, from the human condition. He alludes directly to this idea in his metaphor for sculpture as the earthly confinement of an enigmatic spirit (“I came down, against my will, from a great ravine / in the high mountains to this lower place, / to be revealed within this little stone”.)

Among the most compelling products of Michelangelo's sculptural output, and that which most strongly symbolizes this Neo-Platonic theme of the struggle to transcend physical form, are the non-finito (unfinished) sculptures – particularly “St. Matthew” and the Slaves (works that were a major influence on Auguste Rodin), vague, faceless figures that appear to be struggling to emerge from masses of marble. It is debated whether or not Michelangelo left them intentionally unfinished, but either way these are striking examples of the outstanding characteristics of Michelangelo's art: dynamic, overwhelming strength veiled in melancholic beauty. This was the vision I had in mind as I searched for the mood and language of “Revealed in Stone”.

Michelangelo worked in the tradition of Italian lyric poetry as defined by Petrarch and Dante. Echoing Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, Michelangelo addresses a woman, thought to be the poetic representation of Vittoria Colonna with whom he had an intense friendship (considered by scholars to be more intellectual than romantic). The poems were composed in strict meter and rhyme, and while some English translations recreate this (notably those by Sidney Alexander), I was attracted to the more prose-like translations of James M. Saslow based on their clarity of meaning and dramatic pacing. However, as I began work on the music, I found that Saslow's word choice and syntax did not work ideally with music – with the exception of the first selection in this cycle, which I found to be perfect and have used without alteration. For the other poems, I adapted the text into my own words, consulting Saslow and Alexander, and occasionally the original Italian (which I cannot read, but felt through with a dictionary and some guesswork). I strove always to retain the essential meaning of the poems and to deliver Michelangelo's metaphors intact. But more often than not I have liberally truncated his complex, interweaving syntax into concise phrases that can be more easily understood in real-time performance. I hope that I have been able to adapt Michelangelo's ideas to a form that might illuminate them in a new and meaningful way for the audience.

This song cycle was written for tenor Mxolisi Duda.

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TEXTS

I. Once Hidden and Enclosed

Once hidden and enclosed in a great rock,
I came down, against my will, from a great ravine
in the high mountains to this lower place,
to be revealed within this little stone.
When the sun was born, by one whom heaven destines...

[Fragment.]

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), translated by James M. Saslow.

II. The Years I Cannot Know

I plan for the time that I will not have
to realize a lofty goal.
I promise myself completion
in the years I cannot know.

But oh, that is a stupid thought!
With death pressing near,
the present slips away
and the future must end.

Meanwhile, I waste my time in yearning.
I hope to heal from the wound of love
so I may enjoy, in death, life beyond life.

III. I Become the Model

Sometimes one will make
the image of someone else
look like the image of himself.

So, I make her gloomy just as she makes me.
I become the model whenever I model her.

She is as harsh and hard
as the stone in which I sculpt,
yet all I can see within it is myself.

Art makes immortal a beauty that passes,
so if she wishes to be eternal
then she must make me happy
so I can make her beautiful!

IV. Hidden in You

The best of artists has no conception
that the marble does not already contain.
But that is only attained by
the hand that obeys the intellect.

The pain that I flee and the joy that I seek
are also hidden in you, divine lady;
but it brings me death that my art
denies my wishes.

Do not blame for my pain
your beauty and your scorn,
or my misfortune or fate.

Since your heart contains both
death and mercy, but my poor skill
draws from your heart only death.

V. A Thousand Years After We Are Gone

How can it be, Lady, as anyone can see
from experience,
that the living image sculpted in hard alpine stone
lives longer than its maker,
who will turn to ashes.

Cause yields to the effect,
and nature is ruled by art.
I know, because I carve beautiful statues
that time and death do not affect.

So I can extend our lifetimes,
whether in colors or stone,
by replicating faces, yours and mine.

So that a thousand years after we are gone
all can see how lovely you were,
and how pathetic I was,
and that I was no fool in loving you.

Translated by Nell Shaw Cohen.

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