A Singer’s Notes by Keith Kibler 55: The TMC Forever!

Stephan Asbury leads TMC Fellows in Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop at Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music. Photo Hilary Scott.

I just saw a spectacular production of Higglety, Pigglety, Pop with the Tanglewood Fellows and the excellent Stefan Asbury conducting. Higglety is one of Maurice Sendak’s longest texts, still it is by no means loquacious. There is clarity and there is sharpness in his writing, and this book from 1967 is no exception. Oliver Knussen’s opulent score on the other hand, is a virtual paean to excess. The impression I got listening to it is that of a two-year-old child with elemental, alarming ideas by the dozen, but only twenty words that are speakable. Even worse, if you are the hero of Higglety, Pigglety, Pop, you are a dog with very few words.  The powerful juxtaposition of lean, straight writing and gorgeous, lavishly orchestrated, abundant music shows a rare sympathy with the child who thinks more wonderfully than he can speak. At first one questions how such grand excess can possibly sort with the few words that Jessie the Dog says in the text. But Mr. Knussen’s music uses the text only as a kind of fundamental ingredient and then builds worlds upon it, vocally and instrumentally. The end of the opera is multivalent, a kind of Mozart overture and finale with nursery rhyme words, even syllables sung in a kind of coordinated chaos. I would love to hear an Alice in Wonderland from Oliver Knussen.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!