Morning Edition coverage of Nobel Symphony

Nobel Symphony underscores global need for peace
Kay Miller
Star Tribune

Published Sep 29 2001
Late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, students and faculty members at Gustavus Adolphus in St. Peter were tearful and scared numb. Choral director Patricia Kazarow looked over the text that her Christ Chapel choir was to rehearse and realized that she couldn't conduct it without breaking down:

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

The words, taken from the Rev. Martin Luther King, are included in an ambitious new work -- the "Nobel Symphony." The college commissioned it from St. Paul composer and Gustavus alumnus Steve Heitzeg to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize and the school's 33rd annual Nobel Conference. The piece will be performed Tuesday night in a free concert.

"However important that text would have been before, it was intensified because we all were affected by it," Kazarow said. "Even if students lost no one in the attack, they understood that we all lost -- and that the freedom at the very core of America is what this piece is all about."

The symphony was intended as a celebration, a performance piece, a teaching tool. But with America on the brink of war, it has become a vehicle to talk about peace -- and who it is for.

"In this last week, a sense of nationalism has been growing," said senior Angela Ziebarth. "But this piece is about the global citizen. Peace belongs to everyone."

Heitzeg has composed more than 100 orchestral and chamber works and is perhaps best known for his children's video, "On the Day You Were Born" and his Emmy-winning score for the PBS documentary: "Death of the Dream."

But this six-movement symphony is his largest and most complex work to date. It involves 400 musicians from the Gustavus Orchestra and five choirs -- the Gustavus Choir, Christ Chapel Choir, the Lucia Singers, the Mankato Children's Choir and the Metropolitan Boys Choir.

Known for his focus on peace, justice and the natural world, Heitzeg has layered the work with metaphor and symbolism. Percussionists play plowshares, olive branches, Tibetan singing bowls and prosthetic legs that Heitzeg borrowed from the Landmine Survivors Network. The limbs are mounted as "hollow drums" and played with drumsticks as a protest against the hollowness of war.

The symphony begins with a Copland-esque trumpet fanfare and is laced with jazzy blues, waltz and salsa rhythms. Themes on war and peace provide book-end movements. Between them, sections honor laureates in chemistry, physics and economics.

Heitzeg closes the section dedicated to economics -- "To Have and Have Not" -- with a stirring elegy whose chords shift every 3.6 sections -- a sonic metaphor for the fact that every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger. Before the final ode to peace hundreds of international and foreign language students stand to chant peace in dozens of languages.

The concert is the kickoff event for this year's Nobel Conference, "What Is Still to be Discovered?" featuring five Nobel laureates -- two in chemistry and three in medicine.

"This conference is the single biggest public service done anywhere in this part of the country for high-potential students," said Kelvin Miller, president of Primarius Promotion, who sold the college administration on asking Heitzeg to compose a symphony.

Gustavus has commissioned works before, but nothing of such scope. Its commitment goes well beyond the $38,000 fee paid to Heitzeg, the $10,000 cost of extracting parts for 400 musicians, costs of recording the concert and preparing a remote broadcast for overflow crowds at Lund Arena. Orchestra members returned to campus a week early to learn the score. Singers were plunged into extra rehearsals.

It was a massive undertaking to perfect the score in a month and meld so many groups, said orchestra conductor Warren Friesen. But Gustavus was anxious to do justice to its internationally recognized Nobel conference.

"I can't tell you how many times this year people have asked me, 'Will it be good?'" said Alan Behrends, director of fine arts at Gustavus. "This before I heard one note of it."

Melodies like spirits

War is wide like the light-starved jungle. Peace begins in a single chair.

-- Pablo Neruda

Going in, Heitzeg knew he wanted to use the words of Nobel laureates for the libretto. Gustavus student Ann Marie Miller assembled a 6-foot stack of laureates' speeches, books and other writings. From those, Heitzeg chose quotations from diverse voices: Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Rigoberta Menchu, Elie Wiesel, Amartya Sen, Toni Morrison, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mother Teresa. It took months more to secure permission to use the materials.

Melodies rose like spirits from their words.

For a year and a half, Heitzeg heard the music in his head. It expanded into a world so complete, so full, that when the phone rang he was startled at the intrusion.

Now on a Tuesday -- two weeks before the concert -- Heitzeg returned to his alma mater to hear for the first time how his creation sounded outside of his head.

Walking down the aisle of Björling Recital Hall, the score tucked under his arm, Heitzeg paused, looking down on the lettered rows of seats.

"Shall we pick H for happiness or F for freedom?"

Still singing

Heitzeg, 42, is an intense, unpretentious soul whose gaze seems always cast inward even as he looks out. He grew up on a dairy farm in southern Minnesota listening to wind through the prairie grass and WCCO Radio in the barn.

Going in, no one really knows how a newly commissioned work will sound. Heitzeg envisioned the work. Now he, students and conductors were shaping it.

Heitzeg wanted a haunting quality to "Beloved," his paean to Toni Morrison's novel. But by half-whispering, half-caressing the words, the Gustavus Choir and mezzo-soprano soloist Patricia Snapp shifted from sycopated Caribbean gaiety to an other-worldly quality that raised hair on the neck.

Percussionist Cory Quammen e-mailed Heitzeg questions: How should his six-member section play the tingshaws, African sisal rattle, stones, bells and bubble-pack? "Regarding the Tibetan singing bowl, would you like us to raise it up using either our hands or some kind of mounting system? Also, is the water in one of them to change the pitch of the instrument?"

Through the afternoon and into the evening, Heitzeg moved from singers to percussionists to the orchestra, finally settling himself on the steps of Björling -- close enough to jump up and answer questions.

"Steve, help me out here," Friesen called from the podium. "It's not feeling right."Is this the right tempo? Are the trombones too loud? Is the piano too soft? Can we breathe here? Change rhythms there?"

Heitzeg was mesmerized. The music was wonderful. And no longer his.

"Music isn't about yourself," he said, eyes lowered, as if embarrassed to claim too much credit. "It's much bigger than one person. It always makes me happy because I can leave the room and they're still singing. It's a privilege to write music that people will sing and celebrate.

"Music is life. It's energy. It's just everything!"

-- Kay Miller is at kmiller@startribune.com .