From the cover of Ecce Ensemble’s “Angelus”: Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus,” 1920. Oil transfer and watercolor on paper. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Reprinted with permission.
The mementos that refugees carry remind them of safety, and home. Those mementos take their own journey as well, symbolically conveying those memories, subsequently touching other lives, other turmoil.
Composer John Aylward has captured one such journey in a new recording, “Angelus” (newfocusrecordings.com). The monodrama, set for soprano (Nina Guo) with the winds, strings and percussion of Aylward’s Ecce Ensemble, follows a trail that leads back to mid-century Europe, and the turmoil there that caused so many refugees.
One refugee, the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, owned a painting by Paul Klee, “Angelus Novus.” “My most important possession,” Benjamin (1892–1940) wrote about the work. “This is how one pictures the angel of history.”
To Benjamin’s mind “Angelus Novus,” now among Klee’s most well-known works, envisioned an angel buffeted by forces of nature, and time.
When he was displaced—multiple times—Benjamin entrusted “Angelus Novus” to friends. Long after he committed suicide, trying unsuccessfully to flee Franco’s Spain, the painting made its way to an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Ecce Ensemble, including John Aylward (fourth from left), poses after “Angelus” recording session.
Aylward saw it there, in 2014. He was on a remarkable journey to Europe with his mother, herself a World War II refugee. The Aylwards’ trip was her first since she had left Germany, and her first trip since the recent death of her husband.
“My mom and dad were very close,” John Aylward says. “They were married 48 years, and only spent three days apart. She was looking for a path forward.”
Part of that meant traveling back to Europe. For the composer, the trip jolted the project into life. Over the next several years, “Angelus”—Aylward’s libretto includes writings of Benjamin, but also Adrienne Rich, Nietzsche, Jung and Plato—grew from the experience.
“I always had a couple of movements of ‘Angelus’ floating around,” he says. “At first, I wrote an art song and dusted my hands off—that was that. But you have to keep stretching the canvas.”
For now the recording will stand by itself, since no live performance can be scheduled. As with most ensembles, all of Ecce’s performances are on hold. Aylward, director of music at Clark University in Worcester, stays safe in his Cambridge home.
“Right now, out of respect for our emergency workers, we want to take a quiet step back,” he says of future performances. “We need to focus on the essential workers. It’s been a paradigm shift, in the arts and in every aspect of society. We need to listen to players, and to our audiences. We are going to roll out concerts smartly.”
Ecce Ensemble, formed in 2010, is in residence at Clark, and regularly performs in Boston and New York. A residency at Cambridge’s Le Laboratoire from 2015–17 was particularly fruitful, culminating in Aylward’s opera “Switch.”
Composer John Aylward. Kate Soper photography
In addition, Aylward and the ensemble have been running the Etchings Festival, a composer training vehicle, in the small French village of Auvillar since 2011. That festival was scheduled to move to Connecticut’s Music Mountain this year—another casualty of the pandemic.
The Etchings Festival had captured all of the French village’s attention—both a success and a shortcoming.
“We were overwhelming Auvillar, not taking advantage of the quietude,” Aylward says.
“We had festival concerts, and the entire village comes out,” he says. “There’s only about 600 people there. The venues are packed. We’re the only show.
“But the environment there is conducive to spending more time,” he says. “We always felt rushed. That’s why we decided to move to Music Mountain.” That composer workshop will not happen in 2020, but will someday. “We are re-conceiving it as more quiet and residential. I think we will be able to serve more composers.”
No ensemble wants to stop performing permanently. But for now, it must be accepted.
“Ecce is taking a broad approach,” Aylward says. “There’s always a fear that you may go away, in the minds of the audience. But audience engagement is going to drastically change.
“This is a moment where we could take a breath,” he says. “We’ve got to focus on the things that bring us together.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Opera News and Leonore Overture. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.