{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025025278058645097, 'fraction_numerical': 0.009858442871587462, 'mean_word_length': 4.879643387815751, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
King Priam (review)

Sir Michael Tippett’s creative mind led him in two directions which he explored with equal vigor and success. In the first, his composition of concert music, Tippett took up such traditional genres as symphony, sonata, and string quartet; these works show a remarkable synthesis of many disparate styles behind which looms the decisive influence of Beethoven’s model and manner. In the second—represented, above all, by his five operas—Tippett produced some of the most striking examples of music theater at modernism’s midpoint, even if his contributions are so heterogeneous as to defy any overarching description. To be sure, some of these works are not without their flaws. As his own librettist, Tippett wrote texts that sometimes lacked the felicity of his music; his representations of Jungian psychology in The Midsummer Marriage (1946–52) often seem heavyhanded, and the psychedelic surface of The Knot Garden (1965–70) has not aged very gracefully. Even so, both works contain both beautiful music and more than a few moments which speak to his sureness as a dramatist. At least one of his works for stage, however, repays close study and deserves to enter the general operatic repertory: King Priam (1958–61), his retelling of the Iliad. For Priam, Tippett effected a drastic change in his compositional style by abandoning the lush, strongly tonal lyricism he had cultivated in The Midsummer Marriage in favor of a stark, fragmented presentation of material. The harmony is more wide-ranging and frequently dissonant (though Tippett’s more luminous manner is by no means absent), and the simpler textures are sharply delineated from one another to emphasize their differences, rather like a mosaic. Certain musical ideas represent characters and situations in the manner of Wagner’s presented without the framework by which viewers can understand them. The resulting state of mind is a growing fascination with environmental sounds coupled with a growing frustration over the lack of information about Henry himself. Henry’s output is so large (standing at over 150 cataloged works) and so varied, touching so many different musical genres, that viewers with little to no knowledge of the composer run the risk of spending much of the fifty minute film confused. The film ultimately becomes a collage, a fitting structure given the film’s subject but one that keeps audiences from fully discovering either the composer’s aesthetic or development. In place of background, the film offers those initiated into Henry’s music a treasure trove of archival footage and an opportunity to watch him at work. It also wisely features a beautiful sound transfer that, although only available in 2.0 digital, fills the space and allows Henry’s sounds to come to life. And in keeping with the legacy of the Juxtapositions series, The Art of Sounds features stellar DVD extras including the rehearsal and concert of a 2003 performance of his 1953 “The Veil of Orpheus” filmed at La cité de la musique and the short film Le candidat, the result of a long collaboration with filmmaker Gérald Belkin. These two features are outstanding artifacts and support this release in innumerable ways. A little over halfway through The Art of Sounds, we are treated to scenes of Henry, a composer whose music is often remixed by modern DJs, preparing a performance of his 1998 La l’oème remix, a recasting of his own 1979 work La dixième symphonie de Beethoven. As snippets of Beethoven float over and around him, Henry muses with words that echo through his and Messiaen’s compositions: “It’s a work about life, like a film. A super-documentary. A vision of a world that I do not know but which I have imagined.” Both men heard rumblings of music most of us could never have dreamt of on our own, and through their music opened up new worlds of color and light and sound. These films capture those realms opening up and for that, we can be grateful.