This morning, Argeninian-born composer Osvaldo Golijov sat down to speak about his Pasión Según San Marcos, completed in 2000, which is getting its Colombian premiere tomorrow night here in Cartagena. The suite from Golijov’s setting of the passion had its North American premiere at the hands of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on Feb. 27, 2010.
I spoke at length with Golijov last time he was in Toronto about the political side of the Passion, which gets much of its emotive power from the multiple sufferings of various Latin American peoples over the past four-plus centuries.
This morning, Golijov admitted how he spent two years with acute writer’s block in trying to wrap his creative imagination out of weaving political and social commentary in with the tradition of musical settings of the Passion stories (the shortest of which comes from the Gospel according to St. Mark).
Golijov revealed how staring at a painting — Rembrandt’s 1630 depiction of The Prophet Jeremiah Mourning Over the Destruction of Jerusalem — unblocked something, and got the music flowing.
He was looking for what he calls a transformative experience in the setting of the Passion, and he found it in a personal moment of transcendence.
Has a painting ever had some sort of musical effect on you?
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Here is the aria “Lua descolorida” (also known as The Song of Peter’s Tears) directed by Maria Guinand, who will be leading tomorrow’s performance in Cartagena (the orchestra members will include members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet):
John Terauds