The Garden, at Night: Symbolism and Psychology in Music

Saturday, February 25, 8 pm and Sunday, February 26 at 3 pm

Music by Messiaen, Gubaidulina, Gorecki, and Tann


  • Lars Johannesson, artistic director and flute
  • Susan Bruckner, piano
  • Judith Roberts, cello
  • Susan Brown, violoa
  • Jennifer Cass, harp
  • Sheila Willey, soprano and narrator

The Garden has many symbolic meanings: a place of order, an earthly paradise; a place where the soul meets nature. Fertility, birth, and death. It is an image of the soul and innocence, of consciousness itself. In this concert we set a stage for these ideas to be experienced through music.

Tann’s Gardens of Anna Maria Luisa De’ Medici depicts the beauty of the garden: a place to delight the senses; nature under cultivation: the garden as an orderly, earthly paradise. Gubaidulina’s The Garden of Joys and Sorrows allows the listener to reflect and meditate upon the flow between a garden’s fruition and dying. As much an ornithologist as a composer, Messiaen based Le Merle Noir (The Blackbird) on actual birdsong. Because of its enclosed nature, the garden is also a symbol of consciousness. Gorecki’s text for his Requiem, taken from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Good night . . . flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” symbolizes death and the loss of consciousness.