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ANTHONY FIUMARA MEMORIAL PARK A REQUIEM FOR CHORUS AND LARGE ENSEMBLE LIBRETTO BY DÉSANNE VAN BREDERODE 2017

REQUIEM AETERNAM

KYRIE

This will be a silver spring, clouded but soft. No more stinging rain to remind us of being less vivid water ourselves: thickened liquid, polluted souls, frozen in nothing but stale skins.

I wish I'd wondered where you were. But the gift of wondering was taken from me silently. I didn't notice it at all. Felt left alone, but without feeling it. Left, but no one was leaving. So there was nothing to cry for: even the small oneletter word I was lost in a space which wasn't there.

Let us dive upside down in this pool above, filled to the brim with milk warm air and nameless stars. Let us be floating wings and their feathers. No, let us be snowflakes that have lost their way before starting to fall and dying unseen. Or let us be just the smell of all blossoms Covering what we once called earth with an almost tangible bone-white light, and as young as we could become when daring to try some thing new. Let us dive upside down in this pool above, filled to the brim with milkwarm air and nameless stars. Let us swim and be cleansed, leave our thoughts behind like clothes on a shore — now turning into low singing, comforting, thin cotton clouds again. Snowflakes that have lost their way before starting to fall.

Have mercy, heavenly but clouded sun, on the crooked building that I used to be, unfurnished, empty, a heap of stones, about to be destroyed by some spoiled boys wanting to create something more bulletproof and massive, a fortress, a dwelling place for succes. I couldn't become this habitable shelter, no way, not even a messy bird's nest on the lowest branches of a willow. Some say you reap what you sow. Did I sow nothingness? Was I this hollow, impersonal person from day one? A crack where no light comes in, spreading no light itself? Have mercy, earhly echoes that you are. You, the living ones who pass us by, day by day, sensing a sudden cold in the air instead of our breath, our gaze. You, who are only capable of missing your beloved ones, given to you as if they were cheap birthday presents, to shape in any form you like. Have mercy with those who passed away, unfamiliar with missing at all. Have mercy. Dare to be missed by us, too late. Yet we reach out for you with arms and hands and fingers, cut out of newspapers not yet written. We want to be your friendly mirrors. We long to be your abanded hopes. Your merciful ovens for unleavened bread. Your spines, your melting wine, your homes, Your wide open windows in spring.

RECORDARE

DIES IRAE

And so my angel told me: Let's walk the same way back. Look down as if you were searching for a lost bracelet, a ring, a watch. Maybe you will find it, at the corner of the street, under a tree, next to a parked car: your old body, tired and aching, frustrated by fate and failure, by losing what was called a fight against illness, whether it came from capricorn or cancer. Did you give up too fast, too early?

Hail to thee! Who soweth death in every creature, after giving it life, strength, health, resilience: death will be the one that survives. For all eternity.

Whose judgment was that? Yours or your beloved ones? That of doctors and scientists? Was living long, fit and healthy worth a medical jihad? A sportive one? A spiritual one? By making a foreign enemy out of your own body, cursing it for not doing what you wanted it to you stabbed a sword into the soul before it came into existence. Who gave you this weapon? Who stole and threw away the jewelry? Who was afraid of the glittering diamonds that remain from an almost overblown body? Use my compass, my scales. Who needs forgiveness?

Cutting statues out of movements. Freeze them, letting them crumble. I used to bow for it, humble, paying homage to his prolonged provocative joke. Hail to thee! Who gave men this sense that it's all right and just procedure, that there is beauty in making room for those that never asked to be born nor cracked. And that saying goodbye, day after day, is simply poetry. An infinite leaving behind, as though living is a way of fleeing gravity. But I have seen my neighbours turn into killers. Nephews transformed into ticking armed forces, nameless as victims bleeding by numbers. Thickening blood. They both helped the seeds of death to burst out. Tar black November blossom, smokesmelling corpses, overripe cherries, ready for picking from the streets. An impressive harvest festival. I saw the less gifted assist death in leaking rubber boats I heard them argue about a price, in front of an audience consisting of fearful, dumb deniers of death like me. I noticed their helplessness when an infant fell overboard, their relief that it was just a useless thing without specific talents and dreams. And when I reached a shore and peace: Hail, hail to them! They didn't welcome a mourning man. They call me profiteer. Helpless coward. Or nothing but a refugee. A soul already dead. I should bow my head, humble, grateful, like they never did, with no life whatsoever. Do forgive me for my wish to forgive them. For their lack of esteem, for their unbelievably high and super realistic Darwinistic religion in which I am no more than a member of a species that can respond with fight or flight, with no musical interval in between. With no love, care and grief for those who stayed. Dead or alive or both. Or too wounded to wonder and pray. Or bow instead of them, for ashes and seeds. I guess they don't know yet. My God, they are needy. By their refusal. Their easiness. At ease, completely, with not needing me. Hail to thee!

LACRIMOSA There were these curtains, flower fields. Long summer nights, I saw the pink light and felt the breeze, the waving. The subtle play with roses, jasmine made out of loosely woven cotton and linen, and I was too touched to notice my tears. I invented their scents, I reached for a soft green paradise. I imagined the dazzling oasis that was once a hometown to all unborn souls — feeling homesick, wanting to go back, all of a sudden, to the perfect state of an angel fluttering around the fetus in the lake like womb of whom I had to call mother, my mother, much more so than nine months later. Why, I asked myself, am I alive in a body, on this solid planet? Why not solve the riddle quickly and pass away in my sleep — returning, vaporizing, towards heaven, the source of all possibilities? There was boredom and sadness, failure, rejection, frustration, the tearing of umbilical cords, again and again, there was the expelling, the unbearable pain of others. Worse, probably, there was this theater of so-called grown-ups, acting happiness, telling lies making me and themselves believe that living was an art worth trying and that one could become a genius by clinging to moments of bliss and lust.

Collecting souvenirs, fragments. Storing them in photo albums, on shelves, in wardrobes, garages and garden sheds. Counting savings and interest, complaining about dust and cobwebs, moths, mold, rust and loss, not daring to become just a loser on his way home, towards freedom. O, this rocky desert of mankind. One cannot become a being like them if pity and wisdom raise the curtains, unveil the truth, show poverty: a haunting lack of liquid fantasy and love for which is not there to prove yet. I had no choice but to leave them before they would made me think I did not fit in. I did fit in. It did fit. I was, I am, I will be forever, the rosebud, the new twig, a spring, a future, potential. A river, running, a fountain of breathing, breathtaking, childish playful light. There was just too much life in me to live on like them, drowning tears in routine, and not being drowned anymore by the shockingly tender beauty on 10 PM in june.

COMMUNIO Imagine what these angels show me, by the gift of imagination: Heaven bursting out into earth. Earth embracing heaven, giving birth to the dead. The dead giving birth to springful, compassionate warmth. Imagine it's May, just imagine. How we all become flowers and bees that don't care about the honey. It is there, abundant. It is neither theirs nor ours. Hive and hearts are one. Imagine our own afterlives, in a way gods and angels can only dream of. And how we may offer them skinwarm, purple afterlives as well. Be as ready as you can, and stay awake in this hour in agony, anguish and anger, but with utmost ardor, pretending it lasts forever. To be called 'you' by all the yous you could be when given space. Allowed to give some space. To bless and to be blessed. To miss and mourn, to long for, to give and give and give, most tendersome we guess.

Libretto by Désanne van Brederode

Memorial Park was commissioned by November Music for Bosch Requiem 2017 First performance: 2 November 2017 in Theater aan de Parade, ’s-Hertogenbosch by Nederlands Kamerkoor, Holland Baroque and TEMKO, conducted by Mathieu Romano

TABLE OF CONTENTS Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Requiem Aeternam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Interlude One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Kyrie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Recordare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Dies Irae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Interlude Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Lacrimosa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Interlude Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Communio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

SCORING Percussion (1 performer): Gran Cassa Shaker Drum Set Marimba Vibraphone

Electric Guitar Bass Guitar Mixed Chorus Positive Organ Strings

Duration: 32’

SCORE IN C

MEMORIAL PARK PROLOGUE Libretto by Désanne van Brederode

Anthony Fiumara 2017

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Copyright © 2017 by Anthony Fiumara. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher: Deuss Music - Fijnjekade 160 - 2521 DS - The Hague - Netherlands

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Anthony Fiumara — Memorial Park

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