Last night, I attended a New York performance of De Materie, Louis Andriessen’s 90 minute colossal, inspired, stage work (somewhat like an Oratorio) from 1985. It takes place in 4 distinct episodes, unrelated except for a through line of philosophical musings, including dated metaphysics from I’m guessing the 16th century (?) , ship-building, and geometry. Dramatically, we have source material from the Renaissance: A diplomatic treatise ceding a part of Spain, and a long refl

https://www.patreon.com/posts/4807964?alert=1 There it is. Click on it. Go ahead. Listening to Verdi, you quickly have to banish words like “simple” from your head, if only because his music reveals that word to be meaningless. Verdi is teaching me that the simplest resource can have the clearest, strongest effect when applied correctly. Think of Iago’s aria in Otello–“Credo in un Dio Crudel”, which begins with an imposing lower register melody in octaves, stomped out in the