Dress Rehearsal

Gosh, what a blast last night was. The imminent performances of the Passion are going to transport the audience to another and a better world. In addition to all the [good kind of] chills which were vibing in abundance . . . as I listened to the Deposition from the Cross, it brought me back almost physically to a warm visit to a southerly friend. This was as I conceived the piece, as I hummed it back to myself from the MS., on that day 26 months ago, when the ink was only drying on the page.

Listening to Sine sing the piece through last night, was a larger-than-my-musical-grasp experience, and it seemed to me as if I had written the piece for this very collection of musicians. There are no words for the feeling a composer gets, of so profound an attunement with the universe, a ‘condition’ to which his work has somehow attained, yet not (apparently) any mere result of exercising his own sonic will, as it depends upon the participation — indeed the dedication — of other free beings.

There are no proper words for it, but it is certainly an exalted joy.