Wayland Rogers wants to make the past speak to the late 20th century.
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“The words, of course, are ancient,” Rogers says. “The Sanctus goes back to the Judaic tradition, and the Agnus Dei dates from the fourth century. For me as a composer, it’s hard to look at those texts in a new light. We’ve got everything, from gregorian chant up through Stravinsky, using those words, and you can’t help but have some of those ideals in mind. But I’ve tried to find new ways of setting those same words so that they might reveal yet another aspect of their meaning.”
Rogers believes the minimalist elements tie the mass to the liturgy it’s meant to serve. “I don’t think minimalism has yet reached the Church,” he says, “and I see minimalism as having great possibilities on a spiritual level. Minimalism is based on repetition, and repetition has a long history of being used to awaken the spirit in almost every religion. . . . repetition gets past the intellect and into the unconscious.”
Directing the music at Saint James is just one of the many hats Rogers wears. Since he moved to Chicago in 1973, he says he’s “tried to manage several careers at once–I’m a professional singer, a composer, a conductor, and I’m on the voice faculty at DePaul.” In 1986 a CBS Masterworks recording on which he sang–a Mozart performance by the Chicago Symphony Winds and three vocalists–was nominated for a Grammy. The same ensemble will perform this August at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
