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Commissioned by the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Prize. Premiered at Carnegie Hall by the New York Youth Symphony’s Chamber Music Program.
Live recording by Joshua Palazzolo and Luciana Hontila (violins), Donghee Han (viola), Adrian Gomez (cello), Ana Maria Locke (clarinet), and Fernanda Lastra (conductor).
NOTES:
The allegorical arc of Dante Aligheri's masterwork The Inferno is towards a complete rejection of sin, which Dante achieves by representing famous sinners in Hell from across his account of history, as well as his personal life. As Dante descends further into into Hell, so does he show more open contempt for those he encounters. The most notable bend in this trajectory is in Canto XV, when Dante encounters the sodomites in the seventh circle. Gazing across a burning-hot desert on which Dante's afflicted are punished to walk for eternity without stopping, Dante is approached by a familiar face—Ser Brunetto Latini, his former schoolmaster, mentor, and known homosexual in Florence. Dante bestows upon Latini the most respect given to anyone in Hell, calling him a radiance among men,"and remarks on his profound gratitude for Latini's example as a poet, thanking him for teaching him "how man makes himself eternal." Scholars have argued that given his treatment of Latini, the relatively light punishment of sodomites compared to other groups of sinners in a similar depth of Hell, Dante held relatively progressive views toward homosexuality for his time.
"brunetto" takes the complex emotional content of this exchange between Dante and Latini as its starting point. Dante shows remarkable tenderness towards his former mentor, yet ultimately still casts him down. Dante pays tribute to Latini and simultaneously immortalizes him in history as someone who deeply violated his religious code. The way Dante finds the familiar and ultimately love for the other in an encounter with a group of people who hold divergent ethical and religious views is a practice that reaches across history to find relevance in our current political situation. Rather than attempting a programmatic depiction of this scene from Dante, "brunetto" seeks to stage an encounter with the other with similarly nuanced emotional content for the contemporary concert hall.