Thomas Adès - America: A Prophecy (2024 revised version, with new 3rd movement)

Описание: Anna Dennis, soprano
Hallé Choir
Matthew Hamilton, choral director
The Hallé
Thomas Adès, conductor

Performed 27th March 2025.

0:00 I. Oh my nation prepare
10:05 II. Burn, burn, burn
15:44 III. In every birth a death

Intended to showcase each composer’s “message of hope” for the new millennium, the commission inspired Adès to think of a source that had intrigued him since coming across it during his first visit to the US at age 21: Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno’s English translation of the Mayan books of Chilam Balam. (Chilam refers to a priest or seer in the Yucatec Maya language.) “Their prophecies of cyclic creation and destruction spoke to me so urgently,” says Adès, that when he received the New York Philharmonic’s invitation, he was immediately reminded of these texts and wanted to “unlock their connection to our present and future as the millennium turned.”

Initially, Adès composed a two-part work for solo mezzo-soprano, orchestra, and optional chorus depicting the clash of Mayan civilization with Spanish colonizers by juxtaposing the Chilam Balam texts (in English) with Spanish lines set by the Catalan composer Mateo Flecha. Written around the time of the Spanish invasions in the early 16th century, Flecha’s La Guerra is a so-called ensalada — a multilingual potpourri of contemporary tunes. The persistently repetitive rhythmic motif associated with the Maya, heard at the outset, is torn apart in a climax of battle music.

In its original form, lasting about 15 minutes, America: A Prophecy had “a stark, truncated ending, as if wrenched off — a cliff-drop, with no redemption.” We hear the new version of what Adès calls “my most difficult child to produce,” now expanded with a third part. This new version — co-commissioned by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, The Cleveland Orchestra, and The Hallé — received its world premiere in December 2024 in Leipzig.

“It took me 25 years to find a way to complete it while retaining this message,” Adès observes. “Where the prophetess of the first two movements is a direct witness to chaos and destruction, the new final movement takes a longer view of fate as ‘the wheel of time.’ Maybe the last 25 years have shown me paths to an aerial overview to provide a completion for America.” The chorus takes on greater importance in Part 3, singing from the books of Chilam Balam and with the soloist joining in for the final stanza. “Only now the chorus, the conquerors in the earlier two parts, takes these texts and becomes, in turn, the army of the vanquished — as happened here, as happens always.” (Thomas May)

I. OH MY NATION PREPARE

MEZZO-SOPRANO
Oh my nation
Prepare

The people move as if in dreams
They are weak from f*ck and drink
The prophets and the priests are blind
In his bed the governor weeps.
It is the end of all our ways.

Oh my nation
Prepare

They will come from the east
Their god stands on the pole
They will burn all the land
They will burn all the sky
They will break with a cross
Oh my nation

CHORUS
Todos los buenos soldados
que asentaren a esta guerra
no quieren ir descandsados
si salieren con victoria,
la paga que les darán
será que sempre tendrán
en el cielo eterna gloria.

All the good soldiers
who enlist in this war
do not wish to be rested
if they emerge with victory,
the reward they will be given
shall be that they will ever have
in Heaven eternal glory.

MEZZO-SOPRANO
Your gods, your fathers, your children.
Your cities will fall.
Your trees will be scaffolds.
They will rule from the backs of your fallen.
It is foretold.
Prepare.

II. BURN, BURN, BURN

MEZZO-SOPRANO
Burn, burn, burn
On earth we shall burn
We shall turn to ash
Drift across the land,
over the mountains,
out to sea.

Weep, weep, weep
But know this well:
Ash feels no pain.

CHORUS (DURING MEZZO-SOPRANO’S FINAL LINES)
Haec est Victoria
qua vincit mundum fides nostra.

This is our victory
by which our faith conquers the world.

III. IN EVERY BIRTH A DEATH

CHORUS
In every birth a death
In every death a birth
This is the story of the world
The way it was
The way it shall be
As it was after the flood
Before the sky fell
Before the cities
Before the cornfields

In the twilight between nothing
and being

MEZZO-SOPRANO & CHORUS
In every form a ruin
In every ruin a form
The wheel of time counts off the days
the years
the æons
Shows us the signs for life
Shows us the signs for death
Leads us to the rose
On whose petals are inscribed
The book of years
The eternal turning
towards our end