Copresented by the Accademia Filarmonica Romana and the American Academy in Rome.

Exploring the relationship between death, love, and memory, this tender program features an international collaboration between Extended Music Collective (Belgium) and musicians from the United States, France, and Italy. The program presents works by two composers associated with AAR, Baldwin Giang (2024 Fellow) and David Lang (1991 Fellow, 2017 Resident). 

Every work receives its Italian premiere in this program, including the multimedia piece san clemente syndrome, which is inspired by the Basilica San Clemente’s unique palimpsestic architecture. Featuring ensemble and synchronized lighting, san clemente syndrome finds its starting point in a queer perspective on the basilica as expressed in 2015 Resident André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. Further developing the theme of love is Giang’s ever thine, which meditates on the closing lines of Beethoven’s famous Immortal Beloved letter, creating a lush and timbrally inventive sound world. 

A new arrangement of Lang’s Death Speaks, a breathtaking song cycle using only text as originally spoken by the character of death in Schubert’s lieder, will also receive its Italian premiere. In a way, these latter pieces could be understood as musical palimpsests written on top of Beethoven and Schubert, respectively.