Minneapolis composer Dominick Argento at home. Star Tribune photo by Isaac Hale.
Always keen to promote mass transit, Metro Transit's marketing director Bruce Howard jumped at the news that Minneapolis composer Dominick Argento is a fan.
When Governor Mark Dayton proclaimed Monday, August 8, to be Dominick Argento Day in Minnesota, the composer told the Star Tribune that he hoped that meant he could ride the busses for free. Howard took the hint. Right after Dayton's proclamation was read at Ted Mann concert hall to start the Source Song Festival that evening, Howard delighted the crowd by popping on stage with a free 7 Day Transit Pass for the Pulitzer Prize winner. Argento grinned happily.
Then, with prompting from M.C. Brian Newhouse, Argento explained how love and hearing issues have shaped his career.
"Before I married a soprano [Carolyn Bailey, who died in 2006], I expected I'd be writing symphonies and quartets, but after I met her and fell in love with her voice that changed," and he began to write songs, and later operas and oratorios.
Now, unfortunately, Argento's hearing is compromised and "anything with vibrations becomes distorted," he said. "I can hear my own music and can't recognize it. Listening to music, the chords just sound wrong, and if I write what I hear in my head and then hear it played it just doesn't sound right."
Though a prolific opera composer, Argento is especially well known for song cycles that are often based on diaries or letters by novelists, composers and poets. The evening's concert featured tenor Michael Slattery in a riveting performance of Argento's 1968 "Letters from Composers," soprano Maria Jette singing his 2008 "Three Meditations for Soprano," and mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala and baritone Jesse Blumberg with pianist Martin Katz performing his 1994 "A Few Words About Chekhov."
Hearing problems have now ended Argento's composing days. "Anytime I read something that touches me, I wish I could put it to music," he said. "The will is there but the equipment is not." But he continued philosophically, "I feel I've had a good run of almost 70 years of writing music. If I haven't got it now . . . well."
With some prompting from M.C. Newhouse, Argento wrapped up the talk with a nod to his own Sicilian heritage and a political joke that he feared "would alienate a lot of people." Peering out at the appreciative audience, he grinned mischievously and said he'd heard that Mr. Trump, as part of his economic plan, intended to impose a new tariff on all precut cheese "because he wanted to make America grate again."
