Last Wednesday, while soprano Sabine Devieilhe sang the Et incarnatus est from Wolfgang Mozart's Great Mass in C minor KV 427/417a at the Palau de la Música, I had the grace to travel, more than twenty years back, to the precise day when my professor of musical forms and Mozartean consul in Barcelona, Pere-Albert Balcells, explained this venerable score to me. We had class in a small room of the Àngel Soler music studio, that classroom where Pere-Albert, a most beloved teacher, often told me that, when we find no meaning in this highly terrifying world, the best remedy to continue living is to analyze a Bach fugue before going to bed... or also to study this unparalleled fragment of music which, he said, is particular because Mozart takes advantage of the prototypical text of the incarnation of Christ to sublimate the experience of a protective mother with her offspring, evidenced in the phrase et homo factus (notice the melody of the letter a, the neuralgic center of a coloratura that does not seek exhibitionism, but rather to delight almost sexually in the union with the son; remember, Bernat, that this also happens at the end of Non mi dir bell’idol mio from Don Giovanni).
I was pondering all these trifles while listening to Raphaël Pichon and the professors of the ensemble Pygmalion performing this beastly work, unparalleled in the history of sounds, one of the pieces with which I learned to love music. Because this art, far from consisting of the present enjoyment of a certain trick or complexity (as Proust taught us), is transcendental because it forces us to connect with memory. This is how, at the end of this pseudo-concert aria, I also remembered in turn how, just at the final cadenza, Pere-Albert and I had analyzed the authentically delirious counterpoint of the woodwind with the voice, a fragment that, in his opinion, explained like no other one of the main sensations that Mozart's music provokes; namely, the absolute perception of moving beyond gravitational terms. That's how I felt in my seat at the Palau, not only because I almost levitated hearing again the birgueries of my favorite composer, of the one who always rescues me from suicide, but because I could again understand his gestures by remembering.
“A music concert is the most transformative act we can experience physically and spiritually”
Too often, we forget that a music concert (no matter the genre, because the art of sounds is always difficult to categorize) is the most transformative act we can experience physically and emotionally. In this sound art, as in everything in life, I have become a bit too materialistic because, after all, any musical event arises from a sum of objectifiable aspects (such as the very form of a composition) and particular contingencies of a given moment, such as the acoustics of a hall or the desire of professional coughers to ruin a happy evening for us. But I must admit, perhaps because I am also human and suffer from attacks of sentimentality, that there are musical experiences that make you leave your body to transport you to places beyond consciousness. In the case at hand, we could be nitpicking critics and make amendments to our friend Pichon (some rallentandi in the Kyrie were too sappy and the tempi of the Qui tollis sweetened the drama of the movement) but, when we attend a musical event like this, any amendment is typical of a gilipuà...
A priori, it seemed to me that Pichon's choice (to prelude the Mozartian mass with some motets and choral works by Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Bruckner) was a bit capricious or, in the case of embedding the Ave verum corpus KV 618 at the end of the great piece, directly frivolous. Although the Great Mass is not performed much - when, in fact, it is a more fundamental work than the overplayed Requiem - I understand that conductors come up with repertoire salads so that the usual works gain a new flavor. At first timpani strike, I would say that the pieces chosen do not better contextualize (neither by proximity nor by distortion) Wolfie's work; but again, that doesn't matter, because being able to hear a choir like Pygmalion's, almost as precise as Monteverdi's best years, is always something that will end in enjoyment, even if they sing the unbearable songs of Els amics de les Arts. When a concert reminds you why Mozart has rescued you so many times from boredom, that is, from living death, any other consideration is absurd; in such moments, you just have to close your eyes and remember, with Herr Nietzsche, that life without music is a mistake.
I would like to live forever in that classroom where, many years ago, I learned Mozart alongside Pere-Albert. In fact, I am that small music box... and anything that involves leaving it seems like a misfortune to me, which I have paid for dearly, because I never quite adapt to the world and everything tires me in a horrifyingly childish way. Simply, I didn't want the concert to end. Friends, I beg you, free me from so much literature.