American composer John Corigliano lectured to a small audience inside H-110 last Monday, as part of the Concordia community lecture series on HIV/AIDS. He talked about how he conceived his Symphony no. 1, Of Rage and Remembrance which he wrote as a tribute to friends he lost to AIDS.
“In the 1980s, a particular plague that we all know as AIDS, now struck and really struck North America, New York, more than any other place. And I found that I was losing all my friends and my musical colleagues. I stopped counting when the number reached 100 in my phone book and that was not that far into the epidemic,” said Corigliano, who has a composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the late 1980s.
His closest friend of 30 years, who was a “great pianist,” was diagnosed with AIDS when Corigliano decided he wanted to write Symphony no. 1.
“I was in the hospital room when the doctor came in to tell him that… and I was at that time meeting with the symphony (in Chicago) about the piece I was going to write and thought that, although I had never wanted to write a symphony… that changed my mind.”
It took Corigliano two years to write and perform the work. He said his friend, who was the inspiration for the symphony, came to the rehearsals and lived long enough come to the premiere of Symphony no. 1 but died a week later. In a later interview, when asked what his friend said at the premiere, Corigliano said all his frail friend was strong enough to say was “I loved it.”
Corigliano said part of the emotional need to write this composition came from seeing the AIDS memorial quilt, an exhibition of the largest community arts project in the world made up of 44,000 panels, each symbolizing the life of a person who died of AIDS. The quilt’s enormity, but also this intimacy was inspirational to him.
“When you say, six thousand people died, six million people died, it’s still a number, you can’t even encompass it.
“The identifying with the one and with the many is very unique, and it’s one of the things that music can do.”
Corigliano said he didn’t write the symphony as a political statement but rather as his way to “say goodbye to a bunch of friends” he cared for very much.
Also, he added, the writing of the piece became a problem because it was hard for him to figure out how to organize his emotions into a sensible 40-minute piece.
The symphonist said it took nine months for him to conceive of the ideas he wanted to convey before he even started to write a single note. He finally came up with the idea of making a symphony with three movements that honoured three deceased musical friends.
The first movement, the apologue which he calls Of Rage and Remembrance, dealt with the nostalgia of remembering his pianist friend.
The second was a Tanterella (a south Italian dance played at a continually increasing speed) in memory of a friend who was an executive in the music industry.
The third was in memory of Giulio, an amateur cellist friend. It also branched into a series of remembrances of other dead friends. For this part, Corigliano commissioned William M. Hoffman, writer of the hit AIDS play As Is, to write small eulogies about Corigliano’s friends which were the basis for the series of remembrances.
Finally, the symphony’s epilogue conveyed the sounds of the ocean waves which Corigliano sees as a symbol of timelessness.
All dressed in black, the 66-year-old played a recorded excerpt of the third movement of his Symphony no. 1 as a concert hall recording followed by another piece he wrote based on the eulogies written by Hoffman and direct at an audience who knew the people in the eulogies.
During question period, asked about how the attitude of the media and general public has changed over the years toward his symphony, Corigliano said that the response has continued to stay positive and that music as a non-verbal communication tool can even help people who have prejudices against AIDS.
John Corigliano’s Symphony no. 1 is playing Wednesday, Feb. 18, at 8 p.m. at the Place des Arts in the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier. Student’s tickets are $10. Call the OMS box office at 842-9951 or go online at www.oms.ca.
The next AIDS lecture series at Concordia “From Wasting to Lumpy: Body Image and HIV” with Dr. Cindy Patton will take place on March 10.
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