'Dialogues With Darwin'

Could there be a more pregnant title than "Dialogues With Darwin"? Network for New Music tantalized and rewarded weekend audiences with its Darwin project, involving new poetry, settings of three of those poems by still-evolving young composers, and a highly evolved major piece by Maurice Wright.

Where else could such a program convene but at the American Philosophical Society, for the concert and the poetry readings asked fundamental questions about changing understandings, and even sidled up to the unanswered question: "Does music (or any art) evolve, too?"

Too bad Darwin didn't tackle that one, for in his writings (some of which illustrated Wright's big piece), he puzzled over the power music had over him despite his apparent lack of musical aptitude. If only he could have spent eight years dissecting that puzzle as thoroughly as he spent eight years dissecting barnacles early in his life. He was, after all, a contemporary of Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, and Verdi, all central to reshaping music's path for people entering the industrial age. There's a dialogue we'd all like to have with Darwin.

A photo showed Darwin on a couch in a room so cold as to require coats, listening to his bundled wife play the piano. What was she playing? What rewards was he receiving? What did he feel?

Network's program asked the same question from a different angle. By inviting poets to write about Darwin, it opened the door to weighing what his life and work mean to contemporary thinkers. Eleven poets read their work Sunday, imagining dialogue, evoking images of Darwin's impact, sketching portraits.

Poems by Cort Day, Beth Feldman Brandt, and Jose Cedillos were set to music by Daniel Nelson, Daniel Shapiro, Andrew Litts, David Carpenter, and Ian Munro, all in their 20s, all exemplars of terse, spare, vocal-instrumental dialogue. Litts' setting of Brandt's "Transmutation," for cello, violin, and flute, forcefully welded text and music in illuminating Darwin's struggle with faith and science. "My faith is in the questions," baritone Randall Scarlata sang, "all is possibility in endless forms most beautiful."

Nelson and Munro both set Day's "Megathere, Multiplexing," a deft imagining of the now-extinct giant sloth. Nelson's setting for flute, clarinet, and cello was cool and dispassionate; Munro's used vigorous rhythms and internal reference to differentiate life and loss in the evolution game.

Shapiro and Carpenter set Cedillos' "The Monogamous Man," a tribute to Darwin as thinker, seer, and glowing discoverer. A solo cello joined Scarlata in Shapiro's spare setting; flute and cello lent a nostalgic tone to Carpenter's lyrical approach.

Maurice Wright suggested the evolution of music with his three-movement Darwiniana. Each movement was prefaced by potent projected images and enhanced by projected texts from Darwin's writings. The ensemble - oboe, string quartet, bass, percussion, and keyboard, led by Jeremy Gill - offered historical references, gestures reflecting sounds and rhythms from this minute, transformations, and fiercely emotional outpourings. Wright quotes a Brahms song, but lets the marimba play it; Anthony Orlando proved an expressive lieder (player) singer.

Visual images can overpower sounds, but Wright has not made the two media competitive. Darwin's dining table filling with barnacles, an island suspended in an infinite sea, evolving shapes and colors, asked questions the music answered or explored. Funeral music developed as newspaper clips of his obituary were shown. Not Siegfried's funeral music, but a thoughtful lament for a mind gone still.