Lang's Little Match Girl Passion: Fairy Tale Research Paper

Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion: Fairy Tale Research Paper
The original story is written by the renowned Danish fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) and was first published in 1845. It is an inexpressibly tender and sad fairy tale set on New Year’s eve about an ailing and poorly dressed little girl forced to roam around the cold city streets and futilely sell matches in the midst of snow. She needs to be able to sell the matches, otherwise her father would beat her up so as she continues to unsuccessfully wander through the streets, she continues to be ignored and end up freezing to death. What is incredibly touching about Andersen’s simple yet impactful fairy tale is despite the suffering and struggle, and the somewhat desperate situation, the little match girl in a way manages to keep her Christian purity and ironically is so filled of hope.["The Little Match Girl." In The Christmas Encyclopedia, by William D. Crump. 3rd ed. McFarland, 2013. ]
As the story progresses, we find the little match girl hunkered in the corner of a cold street as she starts to light a match one after the other in a desperate effort to keep warm. With each match stroked, splendid visions start to appear before her, visions of a magnificent fire to keep her warm, then an impressive banquet of dinner followed by the comforting image of a well-trimmed Christmas tree. As she gazes into the night sky she sees a falling star that made her think about her late grandmother who told her that a falling star is a symbol that signals a soul coming to God. Another strike of the match brings back her grandmother’s image smiling back at her and in desperation to keep her grandmother’s face the little match girl strikes all the remaining matches and pleads for her grandmother to take her. As the light of the matches billows, the grandmother holds her tightly in her arms and carries her eternally to be with God.
What is interesting about the Passion story is you get to see the hopefulness in a background of suffering and struggle. The Christian context of the passion of Christ is about Jesus Christ’s suffering through the cross for the hope of mankind’s salvation. In the same way, the little match girl was also scorned by a crowd, dies and is then reformed. This research paper aims to look into the cultural implication of religiosity as superficially portrayed by Lang’s little match girl passion and how Christianity is shaped by this raw balance between suffering and faith.
David Lang is well recognized as one of the cofounders of New York’s Bang on a Can music festival.He was born in Los Angeles, California in January of 1957 and has been in three famous universities in the United States, namely, Stanford University, The University of Iowa and Yale University, the latter at which he is now teaching his art of composition. His website would include a perfect biography of himself, which includes his mission in composition which is “embodying the restless spirit of invention… committing to music that resists categorization, constantly in the act of creating new forms.”[ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Rosenblum", "given" : "Joshua", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "Opera News", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issue" : "3", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2009" ] ] }, "page" : "79", "title" : "David Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion", "type" : "article-journal", "volume" : "74" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=c9db0789-ac63-4dc3-9445-03321cfd3290" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "Joshua Rosenblum, \u201cDavid Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion,\u201d Opera News 74, no. 3 (2009): 79.", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "Joshua Rosenblum, \u201cDavid Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion,\u201d Opera News 74, no. 3 (2009): 79." }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }Joshua Rosenblum, “David Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion,” Opera News 74, no. 3 (2009): 79.] [Lang, David. Personal Interview. SoHo, New York City, NY, 18 March 2014.]
What makes David Lang’s the little match girl passion an interestingly rare piece does not only revolve around how he manages to incorporate the story of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, no less based on one of classical Baroque music’s best composers Johann Sebastian Bach and his St. Matthew Passion (1792), and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, but most especially how Lang’s musical depiction of famous pieces itself is extraordinary. He used simple cells, extended over fifteen movements which is not common for any other regular choral repertoire yet at the same time is still deeply proficient in the traditional classical methods. This is probably because Lang is an American composer and being in a country that although being constantly exposed to a variety of influences in music from around the world, when it comes to choral composition, America stands to be by and large the most conservative of any other country in the Western hemisphere[ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Niekerk", "given" : "Johann Jacob", "non-dropping-particle" : "Van", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "The Choral Journal", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issue" : "2", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2015" ] ] }, "page" : "8-20", "title" : "DAVID LANG'S \"the little match girl passion\": A CONDUCTOR'S GUIDE", "type" : "article-journal", "volume" : "56" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=00c67b3a-0e6d-4e7f-9c6c-256a407ab20b" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "Johann Jacob Van Niekerk, \u201cDAVID LANG\u2019S \u2018the Little Match Girl Passion\u2019: A CONDUCTOR\u2019S GUIDE,\u201d The Choral Journal 56, no. 2 (2015): 8\u201320, /stable/24643337.", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "Johann Jacob Van Niekerk, \u201cDAVID LANG\u2019S \u2018the Little Match Girl Passion\u2019: A CONDUCTOR\u2019S GUIDE,\u201d The Choral Journal 56, no. 2 (2015): 8\u201320, /stable/24643337.", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "Johann Jacob Van Niekerk, \u201cDAVID LANG\u2019S \u2018the Little Match Girl Passion\u2019: A CONDUCTOR\u2019S GUIDE,\u201d The Choral Journal 56, no. 2 (2015): 8\u201320, /stable/24643337." }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }Johann Jacob Van Niekerk, “DAVID LANG’S ‘the Little Match Girl Passion’: A CONDUCTOR’S GUIDE,” The Choral Journal 56, no. 2 (2015): 8–20, /stable/24643337.] [Shrock, Dennis and Incebrary. Choral Repertoire Oxford University Press, 2009.]
The composition of the little match girl passion, while awkwardly complicated at first instance of hearing or seeing it being performed, becomes a lot more relatable and easily starts to engulf the audience into feeling the deep emotions that it wants to convey. It is these sorts of feelings about the passion genre that runs its roots as far back as about seven hundred years and still holds true to audiences now that have caused massive stirs of critical acclaims and possibly led the little match girl passion its Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2008. Critics have actually praised Lang’s piece for its freshness and “raw emotionality.”[Schenbeck, Lawrence. “Innovative new American sacred works: David Lang, the little match girl passion; Phil Kline, John the Revelator; Kile Smith, Vespers,” Choral Journal 50, no. 7 (2010): 76.]
According to Lang, the passion genre allows for an outburst from texts that can be taken even outside of the storyline. In other words, the texts can only aid in guiding the audience into our very own responses to the story moving the audience from being mere bystanders or watchers of the story to being truly immersed and involved in it. The presentation of the passion moreover urges a form of retrospection and an invocation for reactiveness in the lessons garnered from these events.[Lang, David. “program note: the little match girl passion (for chorus),” (2008). Accessed May 10, 2017. http://davidlangmusic.com/music/little-match-girl-passion-for-chorus/]
Lang’s composition involves narrative-like movements that develops the storyline and chorale-like arrangements that engross the spectators into the narratives at the same time offering a time for the audience a moment of reflection on the events in the scene. The blend of these two different forms of movements communicates the story while simultaneously noting upon it as it progresses.[Lang, David. CD liner notes, the little match girl passion, Harmonia Mundi, HMU 807496, 2009.]
The musical score of Lang’s little match girl passion involves the use of four soloists, including the soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices as well...