For those of you who are interested, the full version of Francesca's Folly is available for download at the Chestnut Hall Camerata website.
Click here: Libretto, Francesa's Folly
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Francesca's Folly
The following is something I wrote for the singers involved with our project, who had some (very good!) questions about the morality play I had written for section 2 of the concert. They were asking about their characters, some of whom are angels, and some of whom aren't, but more generally they were asking about the play's relation to Michaelmas. Earl, bless him, thought more folks might be interested in my explication, and he asked me to post my thoughts.
Francesca's Folly is a temptation story. The character of Francesca herself has a couple of precedents, and in the most basic way, when the story begins, she is like Milton's Eve on the morning before she eats the apple (cf. Paradise Lost, book 5, lines 1-94). Lucifer has infused her mind with dreams of transgression, and her state of innocence has been marred by unfamiliar longings for desires that remain unfulfilled. Francesca, like Eve, seeks knowledge--in this case, knowledge about herself as a being in the throes of unfamiliar emotion, but also knowledge about her beloved (whose behaviour she doesn't understand).
In other ways, however, Francesca is like her namesake: Francesca da Rimini of Canto V of Dante's Inferno. In Dante's text da Rimini is condemned to the second circle of Hell for lustful behaviour, and she and her lover Paolo find that their love endures despite Hell's torments (something that Milton later echoes when Adam and Eve continue to love one another after the fall). And for our Francesca, who loves her lover (even though he's a bit of a cad), the belief that her love will endure the torment that it causes is enough to drive her forward in pursuit of him.
The difference between our Francesca and her predecessors, however, is that in Francesca's Folly the protagonist is led by angels to rescue herself from the brink of damnation. This is what links Francesca's Folly to the medieval morality play, the genre around which the plot was conceived. Morality plays tend to begin with God, descend to earth, and return to God again: and in the earthly interlude we are shown the temptation of a protagonist, most often a generic figure meant to represent all of mankind. The protagonist, as in the case of a play like Everyman, encounters personifications of virtues or vices (creatively named things like "Vice" or "Sin" or "Good Deeds"), and these figures either mislead the protagonist from or redirect him towards the virtuous life--and, consequently, eternal life in heaven. Hence the form of Francesca's Folly: it begins with God, who laments that one of his creatures is being led astray; the protagonist then encounters the negative force (Lucifer), and two redemptive forces (Raphael, Michael); collectively these forces prepare her to confront the sin disguised within her breast (which is externalized and personified in the form of a monster in a cave). Francesca, like Everyman, has the strength to admit her own folly and repent it before she dies, and Michael (who, among other things, is the angel who conducts the dead back to heaven) brings Francesca's soul towards God. God, unsurprisingly, gets the final word.
Francesca's Folly is different from the morality plays in a couple of major ways, though. First, the protagonist is a woman, and the crisis she undergoes is entirely psychological. In the morality plays the 'evil' force is a common sin (someone loves wealth more than good deeds, etc); here, the problem is harder to define and certainly not what we ordinarily think of as 'sinful'. Francesca is in love, and she's in love with a man whom she suspects of toying with her affections. His perpetual rejections cause her to recognize how dependent her self-esteem is on her ability to command the love of others--but rather than confront that knowledge, she comes to think she might be returned to her former state of grace if she secures the love of the one person who denies it to her. A loss of integrity and a desperate pursuit of Lucifer are the result.
The good angels, however, intervene to correct the damage begun by Lucifer, and each angel offers Francesca the opportunity to shift her perspective. Raphael, the healer, speaks like a fool to encourage her to take her own folly less seriously, and brings her comfort in sleep. Michael awakes Francesca as a lover might, speaking in the language of the Song of Solomon (another story in which a bride flies after her groom)--and in his voice, which is in some ways a representation of the voice of God, Francesca hears, however elusively, something of a truer and more profound type of love. This exposes the egoism and self-indulgence that lies within her affection for Lucifer; when she confronts the beast in Lucifer's den, her love appears grotesque by comparison and she forswears it. She returns to Michael, she dies, and her soul is escorted to heaven.
If the ending is a little grim, I'd encourage you to think of death as a euphemism, Renaissance-style. And if the moral of my morality play appears a little too medieval for modern tastes (repent! repent!), I'd like to say that the theology really is not. I designed the angels as facets of the human spirit, cast outward into recognizable forms. When Dan approached me about the Michaelmas project he asked for a vision of how angels interact with us in everyday ways ... and while there isn't much that's ordinary about this bizarre little sequence, I think the phenomenon it attempts to describe is about as normal as you can get. It describes those moments of blindness or insight wherein the psyche hurts, heals, and becomes more visible to itself; the angels, fallen and un-, personify that process.
Francesca's Folly is a temptation story. The character of Francesca herself has a couple of precedents, and in the most basic way, when the story begins, she is like Milton's Eve on the morning before she eats the apple (cf. Paradise Lost, book 5, lines 1-94). Lucifer has infused her mind with dreams of transgression, and her state of innocence has been marred by unfamiliar longings for desires that remain unfulfilled. Francesca, like Eve, seeks knowledge--in this case, knowledge about herself as a being in the throes of unfamiliar emotion, but also knowledge about her beloved (whose behaviour she doesn't understand).
In other ways, however, Francesca is like her namesake: Francesca da Rimini of Canto V of Dante's Inferno. In Dante's text da Rimini is condemned to the second circle of Hell for lustful behaviour, and she and her lover Paolo find that their love endures despite Hell's torments (something that Milton later echoes when Adam and Eve continue to love one another after the fall). And for our Francesca, who loves her lover (even though he's a bit of a cad), the belief that her love will endure the torment that it causes is enough to drive her forward in pursuit of him.The difference between our Francesca and her predecessors, however, is that in Francesca's Folly the protagonist is led by angels to rescue herself from the brink of damnation. This is what links Francesca's Folly to the medieval morality play, the genre around which the plot was conceived. Morality plays tend to begin with God, descend to earth, and return to God again: and in the earthly interlude we are shown the temptation of a protagonist, most often a generic figure meant to represent all of mankind. The protagonist, as in the case of a play like Everyman, encounters personifications of virtues or vices (creatively named things like "Vice" or "Sin" or "Good Deeds"), and these figures either mislead the protagonist from or redirect him towards the virtuous life--and, consequently, eternal life in heaven. Hence the form of Francesca's Folly: it begins with God, who laments that one of his creatures is being led astray; the protagonist then encounters the negative force (Lucifer), and two redemptive forces (Raphael, Michael); collectively these forces prepare her to confront the sin disguised within her breast (which is externalized and personified in the form of a monster in a cave). Francesca, like Everyman, has the strength to admit her own folly and repent it before she dies, and Michael (who, among other things, is the angel who conducts the dead back to heaven) brings Francesca's soul towards God. God, unsurprisingly, gets the final word.
Francesca's Folly is different from the morality plays in a couple of major ways, though. First, the protagonist is a woman, and the crisis she undergoes is entirely psychological. In the morality plays the 'evil' force is a common sin (someone loves wealth more than good deeds, etc); here, the problem is harder to define and certainly not what we ordinarily think of as 'sinful'. Francesca is in love, and she's in love with a man whom she suspects of toying with her affections. His perpetual rejections cause her to recognize how dependent her self-esteem is on her ability to command the love of others--but rather than confront that knowledge, she comes to think she might be returned to her former state of grace if she secures the love of the one person who denies it to her. A loss of integrity and a desperate pursuit of Lucifer are the result.
The good angels, however, intervene to correct the damage begun by Lucifer, and each angel offers Francesca the opportunity to shift her perspective. Raphael, the healer, speaks like a fool to encourage her to take her own folly less seriously, and brings her comfort in sleep. Michael awakes Francesca as a lover might, speaking in the language of the Song of Solomon (another story in which a bride flies after her groom)--and in his voice, which is in some ways a representation of the voice of God, Francesca hears, however elusively, something of a truer and more profound type of love. This exposes the egoism and self-indulgence that lies within her affection for Lucifer; when she confronts the beast in Lucifer's den, her love appears grotesque by comparison and she forswears it. She returns to Michael, she dies, and her soul is escorted to heaven.
If the ending is a little grim, I'd encourage you to think of death as a euphemism, Renaissance-style. And if the moral of my morality play appears a little too medieval for modern tastes (repent! repent!), I'd like to say that the theology really is not. I designed the angels as facets of the human spirit, cast outward into recognizable forms. When Dan approached me about the Michaelmas project he asked for a vision of how angels interact with us in everyday ways ... and while there isn't much that's ordinary about this bizarre little sequence, I think the phenomenon it attempts to describe is about as normal as you can get. It describes those moments of blindness or insight wherein the psyche hurts, heals, and becomes more visible to itself; the angels, fallen and un-, personify that process.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The Numinous Experience
The word “numinous” was originated by the philosopher Rudolf Otto, who, coining the word from the Latin word numen, wrote that the essence of holiness was to invoke in the observer a feeling of awe, wonder, and even dread.
John Sanford in his book Mystical Christianity writes that “In the presence of the numinous, we are all believers, for the numinous bypasses rational or logical thought and awakens deeper centers of understanding [and] has the power to compel us to believe in realities that are beyond both ordinary experience and rational comprehension.”
Musicians and artists have attempted to express their own experiences of the numinous, and in doing so, sometimes enable the listener or observer to share in that experience, or have their own numinous experience.
Such a thing cannot be manufactured or manipulated, and when an attempt is made to do so, most people sense it and while perhaps appreciating the work on a more earthly level, will not experience anything more meaningful.
Sometimes, a work of art or music will invoke a numinous experience, even when its original intent was not even intended to do so. The Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan wrote a song called Angels which was about Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvin, who overdosed on heroin (angel dust) and died in 1996. The song has become an official anthem for when events occur that cause people to seek an answer beyond their own ability to comprehend, often when they are experiencing pain. Numerous people have written about experiences they have had when questioning a life experience, and encountering Sarah’s music at critical moments and finding a way to cope through their pain.
Sometimes, the music or the art becomes the numinous experience itself, both for the audience and the composer or artist. Overwhelmed with tears upon completing the Hallelujah chorus from his oratorio Messiah, Handel is reported to have said “I thought I saw the face of God."
John Sanford in his book Mystical Christianity writes that “In the presence of the numinous, we are all believers, for the numinous bypasses rational or logical thought and awakens deeper centers of understanding [and] has the power to compel us to believe in realities that are beyond both ordinary experience and rational comprehension.”
Musicians and artists have attempted to express their own experiences of the numinous, and in doing so, sometimes enable the listener or observer to share in that experience, or have their own numinous experience.
Such a thing cannot be manufactured or manipulated, and when an attempt is made to do so, most people sense it and while perhaps appreciating the work on a more earthly level, will not experience anything more meaningful.
Sometimes, a work of art or music will invoke a numinous experience, even when its original intent was not even intended to do so. The Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan wrote a song called Angels which was about Smashing Pumpkins touring keyboard player Jonathan Melvin, who overdosed on heroin (angel dust) and died in 1996. The song has become an official anthem for when events occur that cause people to seek an answer beyond their own ability to comprehend, often when they are experiencing pain. Numerous people have written about experiences they have had when questioning a life experience, and encountering Sarah’s music at critical moments and finding a way to cope through their pain.Sometimes, the music or the art becomes the numinous experience itself, both for the audience and the composer or artist. Overwhelmed with tears upon completing the Hallelujah chorus from his oratorio Messiah, Handel is reported to have said “I thought I saw the face of God."
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Angel Folk
Angels are difficult to write about. For many people the idea of angels is intensely personal: they can be protective spirits, ethereal presences, the source of religious and prophetic insight, or even a means of communicating with divine forces.
Theologians and philosophers since Augustine have also found the nature of angels difficult to to pin down. Of what are angels made? Where do they live? Do they have material form? How do they communicate with us? Only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are mentioned by name in the Bible (in Revelations, Luke, and the apocryphal Book of Tobit). In Revelation, however, we are told at least seven angels exist:
And I saw the seven angels who stand before God;
And to them were given seven trumpets. (Rev. 8:2)
And the Koran names four more. There is Iblis, the chief jinn, and counterpart to the Christian Satan; Malik, the principle angel of Hell; Harut and Marut, both fallen angels; and Azrael, the angel of death. But are these four the same four as named in Revelation?
As it turns out, and as Gustav Davidson points out in A Dictionary of Angels, much of the information we have about the unnamed angels comes from extra-canonical writing. Some of it is from pseudepigrapha, or falsely attributed works, like The Books of Enoch; most of it, however, is from hierological writings, grimoires, necromantic texts, and black magic manuals. There the writings on angels abound, and it is difficult to keep track of them all (especially as their names change and each angel takes on several guises). Michael, for example, is known to have passed as Sabbathiel, Shekinah, the Logos, Metatron, and, insofar as he is a slayer of dragons, as a prototype for St. George; Raphael is also called Labbiel, Apharope, Raguel, Ramiel, Azrael, and Raffarel. When there is such confusion regarding who the angels are--and when this information comes not from canonical texts but from goetic practices (that is, from the ritual invocation of spirits)--it becomes doubly difficult to discover what angels are, and how they operate.
Davidson's Dictionary gives a good summary of the diverse functions angels have performed:
Preeminently they serve God. They do this by the ceaseless chanting of glorias as they circle round the high holy Throne. They also carry out missions from God to man. But many serve man directly as guardians, counselors, guides, judges, interpreters, cooks, comforters, dragomen, matchmakers, and gravediggers. They are responsive to invocations when such invocations are properly formulated and the conditions are propitious. In occult lore angels are conjured up not only to help an invocant strengthen his faith, heal his afflictions, find lost articles, increase his worldly goods, and procure offspring, but also to circumvent and destroy an enemy. There are instances where an angel or troop of angels turned the tide of battle, abated storms, conveyed saints to Heaven, brought down plagues, fed hermits, helped plowmen, converted heathens. An angel multiplied the seed of Hagar, protected Lot, caused the destruction of Sodom, hardened Pharaoh's heart, rescued Daniel from the lions' den, and Peter from prison. (Davidson xviii)
In strength, angels rival the pagan gods of antiquity, and are known to have moved mountains and smited stars. They are immortal, but not eternal (for only God is eternal), and thus they will live till the end of days. They cannot procreate, but they can, however, be slain (and in fact God himself has slain quite a few).
And to get back to Earl's post, it seems that angels also were given genders. Even though many sources indicate that angels are bodiless (and by default without sex), poets and prophets have embodied angels for a long time. The majority of angels are in fact male (though their images are, as Earl observes, androgynous, and to modern eyes quite feminine in appearance). There are female angels, however, including Shekinah and Sophia, and certainly angels have come to have a maternal dimension in popular present-day depictions. Some poets, however, were quite strict on the subject:
For Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is thir Essence pure,
Not ti'd or manacl'd with joynt or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose
Dilated or condens't, bright or obscure,
Can execute thir aerie purposes,
And works of love or emnity fulfill. (Paradise Lost 1.423-31)
And, a few years earlier, John Donne makes a similar claim in "Air and Angels," a poem which compares his love to an angel's bodiless presence:
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshiped be:
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
[...]
Then as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love and men's will ever be. ("Air and Angels", ll. 1-6, 23-28)
None of these writings, however, are meant to limit what we understand angels to be. Part of the fascination we have with angelic presences lies in their ability, as Milton suggests, to be all things to all people: they are as ever-changing and unfixed as God is permanent and eternal. This is why you see them invoked in an endless array of poetic similes. How many times have we heard that a voice is like an angel singing? That something is as sweet as heavenly choirs? Though many people could only name two or three angels if asked--though fewer would have to hand theological opinions as to what angels are, where they live, or how they speak--their presence is detectable, universally, metamorphically, within our culture. It's that universality which makes them nearly impossible to write about authoritatively ... but (in my humble opinion), it's also what makes them worth writing about at all.
Theologians and philosophers since Augustine have also found the nature of angels difficult to to pin down. Of what are angels made? Where do they live? Do they have material form? How do they communicate with us? Only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are mentioned by name in the Bible (in Revelations, Luke, and the apocryphal Book of Tobit). In Revelation, however, we are told at least seven angels exist:
And I saw the seven angels who stand before God;
And to them were given seven trumpets. (Rev. 8:2)
And the Koran names four more. There is Iblis, the chief jinn, and counterpart to the Christian Satan; Malik, the principle angel of Hell; Harut and Marut, both fallen angels; and Azrael, the angel of death. But are these four the same four as named in Revelation?
As it turns out, and as Gustav Davidson points out in A Dictionary of Angels, much of the information we have about the unnamed angels comes from extra-canonical writing. Some of it is from pseudepigrapha, or falsely attributed works, like The Books of Enoch; most of it, however, is from hierological writings, grimoires, necromantic texts, and black magic manuals. There the writings on angels abound, and it is difficult to keep track of them all (especially as their names change and each angel takes on several guises). Michael, for example, is known to have passed as Sabbathiel, Shekinah, the Logos, Metatron, and, insofar as he is a slayer of dragons, as a prototype for St. George; Raphael is also called Labbiel, Apharope, Raguel, Ramiel, Azrael, and Raffarel. When there is such confusion regarding who the angels are--and when this information comes not from canonical texts but from goetic practices (that is, from the ritual invocation of spirits)--it becomes doubly difficult to discover what angels are, and how they operate.
Davidson's Dictionary gives a good summary of the diverse functions angels have performed:
Preeminently they serve God. They do this by the ceaseless chanting of glorias as they circle round the high holy Throne. They also carry out missions from God to man. But many serve man directly as guardians, counselors, guides, judges, interpreters, cooks, comforters, dragomen, matchmakers, and gravediggers. They are responsive to invocations when such invocations are properly formulated and the conditions are propitious. In occult lore angels are conjured up not only to help an invocant strengthen his faith, heal his afflictions, find lost articles, increase his worldly goods, and procure offspring, but also to circumvent and destroy an enemy. There are instances where an angel or troop of angels turned the tide of battle, abated storms, conveyed saints to Heaven, brought down plagues, fed hermits, helped plowmen, converted heathens. An angel multiplied the seed of Hagar, protected Lot, caused the destruction of Sodom, hardened Pharaoh's heart, rescued Daniel from the lions' den, and Peter from prison. (Davidson xviii)
In strength, angels rival the pagan gods of antiquity, and are known to have moved mountains and smited stars. They are immortal, but not eternal (for only God is eternal), and thus they will live till the end of days. They cannot procreate, but they can, however, be slain (and in fact God himself has slain quite a few).
And to get back to Earl's post, it seems that angels also were given genders. Even though many sources indicate that angels are bodiless (and by default without sex), poets and prophets have embodied angels for a long time. The majority of angels are in fact male (though their images are, as Earl observes, androgynous, and to modern eyes quite feminine in appearance). There are female angels, however, including Shekinah and Sophia, and certainly angels have come to have a maternal dimension in popular present-day depictions. Some poets, however, were quite strict on the subject:
For Spirits when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is thir Essence pure,
Not ti'd or manacl'd with joynt or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose
Dilated or condens't, bright or obscure,
Can execute thir aerie purposes,
And works of love or emnity fulfill. (Paradise Lost 1.423-31)
And, a few years earlier, John Donne makes a similar claim in "Air and Angels," a poem which compares his love to an angel's bodiless presence:
Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshiped be:
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
[...]
Then as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love and men's will ever be. ("Air and Angels", ll. 1-6, 23-28)
None of these writings, however, are meant to limit what we understand angels to be. Part of the fascination we have with angelic presences lies in their ability, as Milton suggests, to be all things to all people: they are as ever-changing and unfixed as God is permanent and eternal. This is why you see them invoked in an endless array of poetic similes. How many times have we heard that a voice is like an angel singing? That something is as sweet as heavenly choirs? Though many people could only name two or three angels if asked--though fewer would have to hand theological opinions as to what angels are, where they live, or how they speak--their presence is detectable, universally, metamorphically, within our culture. It's that universality which makes them nearly impossible to write about authoritatively ... but (in my humble opinion), it's also what makes them worth writing about at all.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Angels as Nurturers
My first memory of angels is from the advent calendars that parents buy for their children for the weeks preceding Christmas. My calendar featured a manger scene, and my favourite picture was of an angel that hovered above the stall... it had an encrusted-gem silver lining on its large white wings, and it was (typically) female, with a look of regency combined with love that I somehow felt was intended for me.
.PNG)
Somehow, I sensed the nurturing of my mother through that image, I now see, and this has become an unconcious association I carry with me of angels. There is no mention of female angels in Biblical texts, but I wonder if in some way angels do express the feminine side of the creator. There are certainly many references to the masculine nature, but for some reason, angels have been depicted often as females.
.PNG)
Somehow, I sensed the nurturing of my mother through that image, I now see, and this has become an unconcious association I carry with me of angels. There is no mention of female angels in Biblical texts, but I wonder if in some way angels do express the feminine side of the creator. There are certainly many references to the masculine nature, but for some reason, angels have been depicted often as females.As an adult, I no longer consciously believe in this image, but there is a part of me that seems to find comfort from images and music that recalls this "childish" notion.
As a musician, my creative force seems to resonate with this early longing, and I can sense it deep within driving my responses to the music I create.
Angels, Bringers of Light
What are angels?
There are as many answers to that question as perhaps there are angels. One can see from even a casual study of the religions of the world that as far back as we have written records, people have sensed the existance of a being that is not of this world, and yet is somehow apparent to our minds, especially in times of distress or need for guidance.
Musicians, artists, writers, and poets have sought to express how they respond to their experiences of who and what angels are. These expressions in turn have guided and even defined how those who encounter their expressions, and have become a part of our religious heritages. These have evolved over the centuries, and today's expressions both draw on the past, and attempt to explain the present, and look to the future.
It seems that whoever and whatever angels are, our understanding of who and what we are, and how we connect with our creator is influenced and nurtured by the creative soul of man. That in itself may say a lot about the nature of angels.
There are as many answers to that question as perhaps there are angels. One can see from even a casual study of the religions of the world that as far back as we have written records, people have sensed the existance of a being that is not of this world, and yet is somehow apparent to our minds, especially in times of distress or need for guidance.
Musicians, artists, writers, and poets have sought to express how they respond to their experiences of who and what angels are. These expressions in turn have guided and even defined how those who encounter their expressions, and have become a part of our religious heritages. These have evolved over the centuries, and today's expressions both draw on the past, and attempt to explain the present, and look to the future.
It seems that whoever and whatever angels are, our understanding of who and what we are, and how we connect with our creator is influenced and nurtured by the creative soul of man. That in itself may say a lot about the nature of angels.
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