Symphony Lights A Creative Fire

A symphony orchestra in a vast concert hall. Ballet dancers, barefoot. A spoken-word poet and a singer. A traditional African drummer. 

These elements all came together in concert, as a collaboration among the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO), New Haven poet laureate Sharmont ​“Influence” Little, and members of the New Haven-area Tia Russell Dance Studio added up to a past-honoring, forward-thinking presentation of Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus that was both an embodiment and celebration of creativity.

According to Greek myth, the titan Prometheus sculpted humans out of clay and shielded them from mockery by the gods, who found them wanting for not being able to fly like birds, not having scales like fish, and not having claws like other animals. In defiance of the gods — for which he was later punished for eternity — Prometheus brought the humans fire, and more broadly, taught them math and architecture, allowing human civilization to grow.

The Creatures of Prometheus, written in 1800, is one of only three stage works Ludwig van Beethoven composed, the others being Fidelio, his sole opera, and Ritterblatt, a shorter ballet Beethoven composed 10 years before Prometheus. As the liner notes to the concert related, Beethoven ​“felt fascinated by the Prometheus character, who he imagined representing his icon, Napoleon Bonaparte (by 1804, Beethoven would completely reject Napoleon, who had made himself emperor, eschewing the egalitarian principles Beethoven once admired). The ballet brought the scenario of the Prometheus myth to stage with new meaning in the context of the Enlightenment,” the philosophical movement still ascendant in Europe at the time, in which ​“ideas concerning God, humanity, reason, and nature came to the forefront.” 

The ballet had ​“modest success” — a run of 28 performances in 1801 — but was ​“largely forgotten” afterward (a perspective this reporter can corroborate; until this concert was announced, I was unaware Beethoven had written a ballet). In bringing the piece to the Lyman Center, the NHSO was surely presenting it to many who had never heard it before.

In introducing the piece, NHSO conductor and music director Perry So stated that the story of Prometheus and the dawn of civilization —and others like it — have been told across the world for thousands of years. ​“Today we’re gathered here to explore through poetry, dance, and music not Prometheus, but his creation — us,” So said. ​“Prometheus is a name from the distant past and a distant place, as is Beethoven. What we’ve taken from these are the ideas that have persisted, and from these ideas came an opportunity to come together and think, feel, and create, across the centuries, across oceans, and across genres.” He called this take on Prometheus ​“our attempt to grapple with our origins and our shared humanity.”

Beethoven is himself a titan of Western classical music, credited by some with changing its course almost singlehandedly as a composer, away from the classical era that perhaps reached its apex with Mozart (who died when Beethoven was 21) and toward the romanticism and modernism that followed, through a series of musical innovations that explored complexities in form and harmonies. His most famous works are still performed so frequently that they’re considered ​“safe” programming for orchestras. His most challenging works, like his late string quartets, are still considered among the most difficult and the most rewarding works in the genre (at the time Beethoven wrote them, some musicians considered them too hard to play, to which Beethoven responded, throwing some 19th-century shade, that they were ​“music for a later age.”)

Prometheus is neither among Beethoven’s most famous nor among his most challenging works, and hearing it in its complete form, it is in some ways easy to understand why. It doesn’t have the catchiness of the former group or the intensity of the latter. But that’s as it should be: the 16 short pieces that comprise Prometheus weren’t written to be stand-alone pieces in the first place. In their original form, they accompanied a series of dance pieces relating the development of human civilization. In the concert the NHSO devised, it was, as So promised, a chance to connect the past and the present.

The overture began with a bright, fleet passage that, in proper Beethoven style, shifted moods fast and without warning — moves that created surprise and intrigue in this little-heard work. A dancer from the Tia Russell Dance Studio clad in white ran onto the stage in front of the orchestra, joined by three others, who spun and posed, introducing themselves to the audience in their first foray. The audience applauded. Then the orchestra fell silent, and drumming, from Brian Jarawa Gray, began. Little took the stage and recited his first poem.

“Imagine if humanity could turn war into a party,” he began. ​“A barbecue, a cookout, a pool party, where bombs are balloons, where missiles are streamers,” and ​“drones spell out happy messages in the clear blue sky.” As the poem continued, Little riffed on the tragic parallel between fire used to create and cultivate and flames used to destroy. ​“Bodies were never meant to incinerate each other,” he said. ​“There’s enough food at the table for Moses and Mohammed.” His poem touched on the conflicts in the Middle East and ended with a plea for peace.

The elements of the piece — dance, music, and words — had all been introduced. It remained to weave them together. As the performance continued, the Tia Russell dancers’ performances rose in intensity. In one, children were chastised by a chiding adult. In another, the dancers engaged in a kind of follow the leader, responding to the changes in the music. In another, the dance was based on exercises, from jumping jacks to weightlifting to pushups, a celebration of the human form and its ability to excel. With every dance, the audience’s applause grew louder and more intense, lending the performance an air of participation uncommon in a classical program. Tia Russell’s choreography tended to eschew daintiness and delicacy in favor of conveying strength and vitality through decisive gestures, an approach that amplified the music and communicated its intentions easily, even in the vast space of the Lyman Center. By the end, the Tia Russell dancers had pulled out their most engaging, muscular pieces yet, and the applause began before the dance was over.

Meanwhile, under the direction of So’s baton, the orchestra brought out the melodic motifs and hairpin changes in dynamics that made The Creatures of Prometheus pulse with danceable energy. The music often shifted from a declarative to more textural mode, and conductor and players alike made of the most of these changes, accentuating the differences to dramatic and emotional effect. The orchestra also handled some of the piece’s more inventive passages with ease, giving space to parts of the piece that involved a melody passed from harp to flute and various reed instruments. Late in Prometheus, a solo passage for clarinet, passed off to an oboe and then to the strings playing in unison, was a high point, the rest of the orchestra playing like they were looking on in admiration.

Little’s poems, almost always accompanied by Gray on percussion, were a thread woven carefully into the piece. While Gray accompanied him from piece to piece, by his third piece, a few orchestra members joined in progressively from piece to piece. In ​“Black Boy,” a particularly moving poem drawing from Little’s occupation as a nurse, and the damage he has seen done to children, double basses laid down a deep foundation while a solo violin augmented the frenzy of Little’s words. A love poem — alternately spoken by Little and sung by Keosha Little, performing as much to each other as for the assembled audience — was likewise accompanied by violin, this time floating sweetly in the background. 

It all came together in Little’s final piece, ​“Real Talk,” in which Gray held off on drums and Little’s words tangled together into Beethoven’s music. For half of that piece, there was tension between the music and the words, as there had been throughout the performance, with Beethoven’s pleasantness coming across as a foil to Little’s often tough subject matter. But in the final piece, as Little built toward his conclusion, that tension resolved. The passion in Little’s delivery underscored the energy with which the musicians played; the brighter music revealed the flame of hope behind even Little’s angriest passages. In the end, Little’s words brought it all home. ​“Humanity has never been given by a Greek god or a secondhand titan,” he declaimed, as the music swelled behind him. ​“Humanity has always been in the power of us.”

That moment crystallized the entire performance. It showed how centuries-old Western European orchestral music could be brought side by side with millennia-old African rhythms, and how those could be intertwined with dance and oratory, two art forms that span human history. Each part of the performance supported and amplified the other, creating a common whole, a community, played in the service of community, where all could find a place. Classical music institutions across the country are still talking about how to make their concerts more inclusive; the New Haven Symphony Orchestra at this point is well into doing the work to make it happen. Call it a variation on walking the walk versus talking the talk. You can say it all you want. Or you can just play it.