As an audience member and a performer, I have been to hundreds of concerts in my life, many of them spectacular. In all of those performances, though, there are a very small handful that have been truly life-changing, that have taken my breath away and literally left me speechless. In fact, I can only think of two such occurrences. The first was a singularly astonishing performance of Verdi's Requiem. The other was an extraordinary performance of Saariaho's devastating and gorgeous Émilie. Her gift for timbral control—indeed, it is a fundamental part of her compositional language—is so well-known as to barely warrant mentioning. It is her humanity, the way in which she can paint the most heart-wrenching scenes with the greatest empathy, which I find both alluring and terrifying. Her work demands that the listener not so much question the existence of their own soul, but rather question the condition of that existence.

This month's clip, from her oratorio La Passion de Simone, has an equally gorgeous score, and makes similar demands on the listener. Based on the life and work of Simone Weil, and dedicated to Saariaho's children, the libretto is from her frequent collaborator, Amin Maalouf. The narrative frame of reference shifts throughout the work, creating a nice mirroring of the light which is basic to both Weil's philosophy and, seemingly, Saariaho's echoing of that philosophy in her own work. Each sound is unique, not just in the work, but in existence. I don't mean that there are literally no repetitions or quasi-sequences (though they are few), or that she doesn't use notes (she does), but rather that the experience of every sound flows so naturally from those which precede them, and each is so finely shaded in pure sonic vibrancy, that it is virtually impossible to experience the work as a mere musical expression. While most composers, even great ones, make music (i.e., their sound-world is formed mostly from what they believe is at their disposal), Saariaho is more exactly creative in the literal sense of the word in her work: she brings into this world sounds from beyond it, and she dares to share them with us. Is it any wonder that the motif which rings in so much of her work ultimately is the infinite subtle shades of the universal constant: love?

The ridiculous task of choosing a clip from the work this month ended up being virtually arbitrary. The artistry in every one of the 15 "stations" in the work (there is a deliberate allusion to the Via Crucis) is so masterful that finding a spot to fade in or fade out, as I normally do with the clips, is very difficult. It's like finding a favorite syllable in a Shakespeare sonnet; you ain't gonna get much just from that. Most of my clips are between 1 and 2 minutes long. There have even been several examples of complete movements or complete songs. But this month's clip, at more than 5 and a half minutes is, by far, the longest to date. There are many moments of text in La Passion de Simone which can be inspiring, moving, or even irritating, depending on one's personal Weltanschauung; there are no moments in the text which are not thought-provoking. The work is loosely framed by the idea that, "Nothing that exists is absolutely worthy of love, so we must love that which does not exist." Other moments contemplate Simone's lack of choice in being a woman, in being Jewish, in being tormented. We are asked to consider many angles of Simone's suspect relationship to her own body (personally, I identify in at least one angle about this quite strongly, as some of the issues are ones I, too, have dealt with). And we are forced to reckon with the "Two powers [which] hold sway over the universe: light and gravity." For the clip this month, though, I've chosen to share the 8th station, which has only one line of text for you to consider:

          "God withdraws so as not to be loved as a treasure is loved by a miser."