by Paul J. Pelkonen
On Monday night, the New York Philharmonic gathered music lovers and museum patrons at the Tenement Museum for a short program providing a first look at Fire in my mouth. This is the new oratorio by composer Julia Wolfe which premieres at the New York Philharmonic next Thursday. It is a 45-minute deep delve into the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which claimed the lives of 146 New York garment workers on March 25, 1911.
The evening opened with Retrieve, a short and searing composition for double bass and cello. Bassist Max Zegner and cellist Ru-Pei Yeh performed tucked into a corner of the gift shop under a string of bulbs as the city whizzed by outside. The piece proved a quiet storm of ostinato rhythms, glissando string slides and a surging pulse that contrasted the guttural roar of the bass with the sweet singing tone of the cello. It ended with a high, keening climax with both players hammering away with their bows, their fingers down below the fretboard.
We walked out of the gift shop onto Delancey Street where we were met by our guide. "OK," she said. "This is Green Group. We're going to be going around to our back entrance, and then up to the second floor. Please follow a few basic rules of the museum. There is no flash photography. There is no food or drink. And--this is the hard one--there is no leaning on the walls or the doorways. This is a fragile building, and we want to preserve its fragility."
Written for a massed chorus of singers (one for each victim) and large orchestra, Fire in my mouth chronicles the tragic loss of life in that horrific fire. However, it also offers hope, reflecting that the events at the Triangle Factory led to protests, strikes, and the implementation of safety conditions for workers in the past century. The homes we were about to visit, perfectly preserved chambers of the Tenement Museum, were living testaments to those hard workers whose exploitation and cruel treatment at the hands of bosses is all to relevant in today's political and economic climate.
We climbed up the outer, then the inner stairs to one of these small apartments, the home of a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family. The daughters slept head-to-toe in the kitchen, The four sons took the parlor floor, along with boarders. All used the single bare toilet in the hallway, shared by four other apartments. In this space stood three members of Philadelphia-based vocal ensemble, who gave us our first exposure to a bit of Ms. Wolfe's new work: a setting in Yiddish of a sewing song.
Back outside again, and a traipse down the outside museum steps to a second apartment. In this one, we found Ms. Wolfe herself. The composer was most gracious, answering the questions of audience members and providing some perspective into how and why she wrote this new work. Fire in my mouth (the title comes from a quote from one of the post-Triangle protesters) was commissioned by the Philharmonic as a follow-up of sorts to Ms. Wolfe's last large-scale work, which was played at the NY Phil Biennial in 2012. This was the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields, a harrowing look at the brutality of coal mining and child laber in the composer's native Pennsylvania.
We exited, turning in a dark hallway and then up another worn, wooden, steep staircase. In the third apartment, the working space of a German Jewish seamstress, six more members of The Crossing awaited. They sang part of the finale of Ms. Wolfe's piece, music constructed entirely from the names of the victims of the Triangle Fire. This was overwhelming in this small, aged parlor. The names crossed and overlapped, syllables landing on syllables, going fron individual, discernable identities to a mass of the long and distant dead. It was powerful and effective. Next week, with the full Philharmonic backing these singers and a children's choir too, it will be utterly devastating.
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