When a fire broke out at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, the British composer Julian Anderson was ravaged.
“Seeing an exact and stunning and valuable structure like that liquifying almost into the fire was really, really traumatizing,” he stated in an interview.Anderson soon began carrying some of his despondence into”Litanies, “a 25-minute meditation for cello and orchestra. In the second movement, a series of chords emerges then disappears, echoing the disaster.On Monday, “Litanies “won the 2023 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition,
one of contemporary music’s most prestigious rewards. The Grawemeyer, which is administered and was revealed by the University of Louisville in Kentucky, includes$100,000. In choosing Anderson, 55, the reward paid homage to a prolific composer known for his vivid imagination. His music makes use of a range of customs– mixing folk, for instance, with more modern sounds. He has won commissions from leading orchestras, consisting of the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.The author Marc Satterwhite, who directs the award, praised”Litanies”for its expedition of”practically every noise a cello and orchestra can make together.”Anderson composed the piece for the cellist Alban Gerhardt, who premiered the work in 2020 with the National Orchestra of France. “It spans a huge emotional variety and is constantly inventive,”Satterwhite stated in a statement,”but always toward an expressive end, never ever for the sake of novelty.”Anderson finished”Litanies “in 2019, a number of months after the fire and a year
after the death of his friend Oliver Knussen, the prominent author and conductor.Knussen’s death likewise influenced the work.”There is a sense of time running out,”Anderson stated of a cadenza that slowly dissipates.The Grawemeyer has been granted to a few of the most crucial contemporary composers, consisting of Gyorgy Ligeti, John Adams, Tan Dun, Thomas Adès, Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Olga Neuwirth and Esa-Pekka Salonen, to name a few. Anderson will accept the reward in Louisville in the spring.Anderson, a professor of structure and composer-in-residence at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, stated that he hoped the award would assist accentuate the importance of modern music and live performance.”There is absolutely nothing that changes the live experience, “he said.”The pleasure, the satisfaction, the revelation, even, of hearing wonderful music played really in the space with you
, not just on a computer screen with earphones.”