Fortunately for classical music, industry awards carry an air of legitimacy that’s often lacking from any pop Grammys or the Oscars. There’s no classical equivalent to the Recording Academy’s conclusion that in three of the last ten years, the Foo Fighters made the single finest rock album. In the case of David Lang’s 2008 Pulitzer-winning The Little Match Girl Passion, evidence of what drew the jury to honor this haunting work immediately springs from the speakers.
The Bang on a Can cofounder looks to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as the musical framework for Hans Christian Andersen’s story, replacing Jesus with the titular little girl, “elevating her sorrow to a higher plane,” the New Yorker explains in his notes to the Carnegie Hall commission. Andersen’s tale remains a horrifyingly adult morality play intended for children, in which a young, underdressed girl is sent out into the cold by her abusive father to sell matches in the street. Ignored by passersby, she huddles next to a house; with each match she strikes to warm herself, she has an exquisite vision of a glowing stove, a stuffed goose, a sparkling Christmas tree and, finally, as she freezes to death, her beloved grandmother.
Four members of Hillier’s excellent Theatre of Voices ensemble offer constantly interweaving lines of text, commenting on the story in Greek-chorus fashion and playing each of the percussion instruments—glockenspiel, crotales, bass drum. The vocal work is stunning, with an early-Renaissance-like purity that brings an aural shimmer to Lang’s melancholy harmonies. Especially arresting is the “When it is time for me to go” movement, in which the stuttering evokes seemingly empathetic teeth-chattering by the performers. In the moving final eulogy, female voices despairingly chant to the little girl, “Rest soft…rest soft,” until all that’s left is the decay of sleigh bells.
Nothing short of devastating, Match Girl deserves whatever trophies are thrown its way.
- Doyle Armbrust
published in Time Out Chicago on June 22nd, 2009