Based on Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s Twelve Canticles for the Zealot – a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the minds of fanatics – Lansing’s Zealot Canticles is a concert-length choral ‘oratorio’ for clarinet, string quartet, and choir. Soyinka’s texts and Lansing’s responses are universal pleas for peace and tolerance, yet they force us to look into the mirror and recognize the thin line between devotion and intolerance, zealotry and radicalism. A major work on themes that dominate our public discourse every day.

Zealot Canticles was commissioned by Donald Nally and The Crossing, with generous support from The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University, and the University of Miami.

Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first African recipient of the award. Throughout the set of canticles, Soyinka makes universal pleas for peace from multiple languages and religious cultures. Seven of these poems form the core of the libretto of Zealot Canticles. Interwoven with these poems are excerpts from Soyinka’s book The Man Died, his play Madmen and Specialists, and interviews, lectures, and speeches reflecting on his upbringing in an environment of tolerance, and condemning the current climate of intolerance, bigotry, and violence.

Of the work, McLoskey says, “From the opening poem I couldn’t help but reflect upon the parallels between the delirium of the religious fanatic and the delirium of Soyinka himself during hunger fasts. Self-deprivation and hallucinations are not the sole prerogatives of the unjustly imprisoned, after all, but also common among zealots of another sort. Soyinka’s own renunciations of self, ‘I need nothing...I feel nothing… I desire nothing,’ are renunciations and exhortations echoed in ultra-devotees from Buddhist monks and Hindu ascetics to Christian hermits and the Taliban. Is there then not a thin line between extreme devotion – zealotry – and radicalism? And that line is both personal and public. The words of Wole Soyinka are not just generalizations or universal in nature, but specifically about us. Right here, right now.”

Lansing McLoskey came to the world of composition via a somewhat unorthodox route. The proverbial “Three B’s” for him were not Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, but rather The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. His first experiences at writing music were not exercises in counterpoint, but as the guitarist and songwriter for punk rock bands in San Francisco in the early 1980’s. 

''The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.''
Wole Soyinka, Dec. 14th, 1971

Wole Soyinka (b. 1934) is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1967 Soyinka was arrested and imprisoned for ''civil defiance.'' His crimes? Denouncing the suppression of human rights and free speech by the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon, intervening in an attempt to avoid the Nigerian/Biafran civil war, and condemning the genocide of the Igbo people. In the decades following his release, Soyinka has remained an outspoken advocate for human rights. 

During his two years in prison, Soyinka spent several stints in solitary confinement and went on a number of hunger strikes; some near fatal. He chronicled his imprisonment in the book The Man Died, much of which was written in secret between the lines of books smuggled in by friends and sympathetic jailers, and on scraps of paper hidden in the cracks in his cell, with a stolen pen, then with ingeniously homemade ink and hand-crafted writing utensils. 

In addition to the obvious physical effect of extreme fasts, there are the psychological and mental consequences. Soyinka writes of ''achieving true weightlessness…blown about by the lightest breeze, by the lightest lyrical thought or metaphor''and describes spells of delirium, hallucination, but also trance-like states and unparalleled lucidity. Near the end of his imprisonment (thus the end of the book), the three-part phrase ''I need nothing. I feel nothing. I desire nothing.'' becomes a repeated refrain; a mantra, if you will. The phrase is both an internal safe-haven for Soyinka’s mind as well as a defiant response to his interrogators. 

In 2002 Soyinka published a set of poems titled ''Twelve Canticles for the Zealot''; a strangely beautiful and terrifying look into the mind of fanatics, containing a subtle catalogue of the horrific results, past and present. Throughout the set of canticles Soyinka makes universal pleas for peace from multiple languages and religious cultures. Seven of these poems form the core of the libretto of Zealot Canticles.

Interwoven with these poems are excerpts from The Man Died, his play Madmen and Specialists, and interviews, lectures, and speeches given by Wole Soyinka, reflecting on his upbringing in an environment of tolerance, and condemning the current climate of intolerance, bigotry, and violence.

From the opening poem I couldn’t help but reflect upon the parallels between the delirium of the religious fanatic and the delirium of Soyinka himself during hunger fasts. Self-deprivation and hallucinations are not the sole prerogatives of the unjustly imprisoned, after all, but also common among zealots of another sort. Visions of God are hailed in prophets and scripture, but wielded as weapons by radicals and the demented. Soyinka’s own renunciations of self (''I need/feel/desire nothing.'') are renunciations and exhortations echoed in ultra-devotees from Buddhist monks and Hindu ascetics to Christian hermits and the Taliban.

Is there then not a thin line between extreme devotion – zealotry – and radicalism? And that line is both personal and public. One zealot preaches against the errors of a different faith, another spews hatred towards those who hold that faith. One extols devotion, the other breeds divisiveness. We only have to turn on the television to see how small the step can be from self-righteousness to political/social oppression or roadside bombs. 

But it’s not just roadside bombs we have to worry about. I was composing this piece during what was the most distressing U.S. presidential campaign in modern history, when every day we were faced with words of divisiveness, demeaning, mocking and degrading ''the other,'' and images of our fellow citizens, red-faced with both rage and glee, shouting for the removal – even killing – of those of a different faith or ethnicity, while opening waving racist banners. Alarmingly casual suggestions to ''knock the crap out of'' those with whom they disagreed were not just empty rhetoric, and we watched with horror the footage of people punched, kicked, and beaten up. 

And just as I was about to start composing the final movement, the election took place. Hate crimes in our own country immediately surged in the aftermath. I was shaken to the core. The words of Wole Soyinka were not just generalizations or universal in nature, but specifically about us. Right here, right now.

I’d like to express my gratitude to Donald and The Crossing for their devotion to music as a living and always-relevant art form.

Libretto

I. RENUNCIATION (PRELUDIUM)

All

Canticle I.

He wakes from a prolonged delirium, swears
He has seen the face of God.
God help all those whose fever never raged
Or has subsided.

I need nothing.
I feel nothing.
I desire nothing.

II. LET’S START

Soprano
Let's start right at the very beginning. What were the circumstances of your birth, your early upbringing?

Baritone
Wole Soyinka: I was born into a Christian household, in a parsonage in fact, so I grew up in sort of a missionary atmosphere but it was an environment which involved both the traditional religions as well as the Muslim religion, so we were exposed to all the various facets of faith, micro cultures which existed within those beliefs, and even though I've lost whatever Christian faith was drummed into me as a child, I still maintain very good relationships with all the various religions.

III. PERCHED ON CHURCH STEEPLE

All

Canticle II.

Perched on church steeple, minaret, cupola
Smug as misericords, gleeful as gargoyles
On gables of piety, the vampire acolyte
Waits to leap from private hell
To all four compass points—but will not voyage alone.
His variant on the doctored coin reads: Come with me or --
Go to—hell!

IV. I INTEND TO BE BLUNT

Baritone
Today’s event may yet make a Christian out of me – since, from my admittedly imperfect recollection of the Christian bible – somewhere, it is written: to him who hath, even more shall be given. Today, I am setting aside all objections.
I intend to be blunt. When you live in an environment of the progressive insemination of fear as an agency of faith, it is no time for palliatives of speech and timorous euphemisms. As the poet Langston Hughes, a product of generations of intolerance, observes in one of his poems: “There is no lavender word for ‘lynch’.

V. I SHALL RAM PEBBLES IN MY MOUTH

Men

I shall ram pebbles in my mouth
Demosthenes
Not to choke, but half dolphin, half
Men
Shark hammerhead from fathoms deep
Ride the waves to charge the breakers
They erect,
Crush impediments of power and inundate
Their tainted towers –
I shall ram pebbles in my mouth.

VI. ARMED WITH BOOK AND BEARD

All

Canticle VI.& XII.

It was his own kind, nailed
Yitzak Rabin to crossroads of the Orient
Arms extended to the Heights
Of peace. Across the Suez, the ghost
Of his precursor on the viewing stand
Watched the grim replay of a familiar reel.
The cleric swears he’ll sweep the streets clean
Of the unclean, armed with Book and Beard. Both
Turn kindling, but overturn the law of physics.
For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.

VII. THE WRITING ON THE WALL

Soprano
The writing on the wall is no longer a mere biblical metaphor, it refers graphically today to the spattered grafitti of blood on the walls of our homesteads, schools, offices, sanctuaries of worship and children’s nurseries. That writing is the universal language of nations, on the road to perdition.

Mezzo
Permit me to recall an exercise in a minor key

Duet
did we fail to learn,
that guns and boots
are not essential to
a coup d'etat.

VIII. I SHALL PLACE NETTLES ON MY TONGUE

Women

I shall place nettles on my tongue
Demosthenes
Then thwart its stung retraction. Oh,
Let it burn at root and roof
Let rashes break from every pore
Just so it sear the tyrant´s power
With one discharge
I shall place nettles on my tongue.

IX. SEEK HAVENS OF PEACE ON OCEAN FLOOR

All

Canticle IX.
The meek shall inherit the earth ...
Blessed are the peacemakers ...
Shalom ... Shalom ... Shalom ...
Irosu wonrin, irosu wonrin.

Salaam ailekum, ailekum
Shanti ... shanti ... shanti ...
Oom ... oom ... oom ... ooom ...

Mezzo/Baritone
Seek havens of peace on ocean floors,
Submarine depths, in lost worlds, black holes
Collapsed galaxies, in hermit caves
In jungle fastnesses and arctic wastes
Thorns of crowns and hairy shirts, beds of nails,
The saintly cheek that turns the other side, but—
Not in texts, not by learned rote. It’s there
The unmeek prove inheritors of the earth.

All

They are the scripture grooms, possessive
To the last submissive dot. Punctilious
Guards of annotations, they sleepwalk blind to all
But the fatal hiatus:
Boom for oom and—sword for Word.
What is missing is—fulfilled!

X. THE DOG IN DOGMA

Soprano

… you cyst, you cyst, splint in the arrow of arrogance, the dog in dogma, the tick of a heretic, the tick in politics, the mock of democracy, the mar of marxism the tic of a fanatic, the boo in buddhism, the ham in Mohammed, the dash in the criss-cross of Christ, a dot in the I of ego an ass in the mass, the ash in ashram, a boot in kibbutz, the pee of priesthood, the peepee of perfect priesthood, oh how dare you raise your hindquarters you dog of dogma and cast the scent of your existence on the lamp-post of destiny you HOLE IN THE ZERO of NOTHING!

All

Hraagrh hraagrh hraagrh … ptuh – splat!
Pig!
Hraagrh hraagrh hraagrh … ptuh – splat!
Pig!
Hraaaaaagrrrrh hraaaaagrrrhaaaarrh…ptuh – splat!
Vile heathen pig!

XI. I AM RIGHT, YOU ARE DEAD.

Baritone

I am right, you are wrong.
I am right, you are dead.

XII. I SHALL PLACE WEREPE ON EVERY TONGUE

Men

But have you heard of werepe
Demosthenes?
Not all your Stoics´ calm can douse
The fiery hairs of that infernal pod.
It makes a queen run naked to the world
An itch that tells the world its flesh
Is whorish sick –
I shall place werepe on every tongue.   

XIII. I TURNED TO STONE

Mezzo
Time vanished. I turned to stone. The world retreated into fumes of swampland.
I am alone with sounds. They acquire a fourth dimension.
The body achieves, of course, true weightlessness. I am blown about by the lightest breeze, by the
lightest lyrical thought or metaphor. Layer by layer, layer by layer.

All

I need nothing.
I feel nothing.
I desire nothing.

XIV. THE MAN DIES

Clarinet/Quartet

XV. I’LL DROP SOME RATSBANE ON MY TONGUE

Men

I´ll drop some ratsbane on my tongue
Demosthenes
To bait the rodents with a kiss of death
I´ll seal their fate in tunnels dark and dank
As habitations of their hostages
Denied of air, denied of that same light
Their hands had cupped to immerse their world
I´ll drop some ratsbane on my tongue.

Women

I´ll thrust all fingers down the throat
Demosthenes
To raise a spout of bile to drown the world.
It´s petrified, Demosthenes, mere forms,
Usurp the heaters we knew, mere rasps.
This stuttering does not become the world,
This tongue of millions fugitive from truth –

I´ll let the hemlock pass
Demosthenes
Oh, not between my lip – I´ve shared
At one with that agnostic sage. throats
Its thin dissolve in myriad

All

They did not stutter like the world they left –
And I know why –
Their lives were spent with heated pebbles
On their tongues, Demosthenes!

XVI. THE 13TH CANTICLE

All

...and a thirteenth for the merely superstitious.
This thirteenth canticle for you, and let
Ill-luck infest your dreams awhile, stress your fears.
Not one but both—Friday and thirteen
Joined to press the entry of my world
Onto your calendar. Would I could boast
A triple six, a Grand Slam by Satan’s reckoning—
I would have long submerged the world
In cosmic laughter!

XVII. WHERE ARE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

Soprano/Women

From a distant
Shore they cry, Where
Are all the flowers gone?
I cannot tell
The gardens here are furrowed still and bare.

Garlands
Of scavengers weigh
Heavy on human breasts
Such
Are flowers that fill the garden of decay

I saw:
Four steel kites, riders
On shrouded towers
Do you think
Their arms are spread to scatter mountain flowers

Take Justice
In your hands who can
Or dare. Insensate sword
Of Power
Out-herods Herod and the law’s outlawed.

XVIII. BI O TI WA

Mezzo/Soprano/All

Now – As Ever Shall Be …
Bi o ti wa
Ni yio se wa
Bi o ti wa
Ni yio se wa
Bi o ti wa l’atete kose …
Even as it was
So shall it be
Even as it was
So shall it be
Even as it was at the beginning of the act …

XIX. BI O TI WA L’ATETE KOSE… 

String Quartet/Clarinet

XVIII. BI O TI WA

All

The meek shall inherit the earth ...
Blessed are the peacemakers ...
Shalom ... Shalom ... Shalom ...
Irosu wonrin, irosu wonrin.
Salaam ailekum, ailekum
Shanti ... shanti ... shanti ...
Oom ... oom ... oom ... ooom ...

Baritone

What is on fire today is not only within the mind, but the very nation space in which we all draw breath. Look left and right, check morning and night and you stumble on new minted issues that drain your vitality and compress the mind’s scope of functioning.

We must learn to identify the camouflage of power. Secular or theocratic, that camouflage must be ripped wide open so that the real contender – the latest, smirking, unctuous face of Power in whatever guise, is exposed, and neutralised.

Only then shall we have truly fulfilled our existence and deserved our Freedom, only then would we have concluded our final assignation with – History.

Sources

I. RENUNCIATION (PRELUDIUM)

Canticle I. from “Twelve Canticles for a Zealot”

II. LET’S START

Excerpt from an interview with Wole Soyinka by Simon Stanford, 28 April       2005.

III. PERCHED ON CHURCH STEEPLE

Canticle II. from “Twelve Canticles for a Zealot.”

IV. I INTEND TO BE BLUNT

Opening statement from lecture delivered upon receipt of the Obafemi Awolowo Prize For Leadership, 6 March, 2013.

V. I SHALL RAM PEBBLES IN MY MOUTH

“Ah, Demosthenes!” from “Two Poems for the Pen.”

VI. ARMED WITH BOOK AND BEARD

Canticles VI. & XII. from “Twelve Canticles for a Zealot.”

VII. THE WRITING ON THE WALL

First part: From a speech delivered at the second South-South Economic Summit in Asaba, Delta State, 26 April, 2012. Printed in The Nation, May 5, 2012.

Second part (“did we fail to learn…”: From "Elegy for a Nation (For Chinua      Achebe at 70)."

VIII. I SHALL PLACE NETTLES ON MY TONGUE

“Ah, Demosthenes!”

IX. SEEK HAVENS OF PEACE ON OCEAN FLOOR

Canticle IX. from “Twelve Canticles for a Zealot”

X. THE DOG IN DOGMA

From Madmen and Specialists and The Man Died

XI. I AM RIGHT, YOU ARE DEAD

From Soyinka’s article "Power and Freedom/I Am Right; You are Dead," New England Journal of Public Policy, April 2005.

XII. I SHALL PLACE WEREPE ON EVERY TONGUE

“Ah, Demosthenes!”

XIII. I TURNED TO STONE

From The Man Died

XV. I’LL DROP SOME RATSBANE ON MY TONGUE

“Ah, Demosthenes!”

XVI. THE 13TH CANTICLE

From “Twelve Canticles for a Zealot”

XVII. WHERE ARE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

 Excerpts from “Flowers For My Land,” printed in A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972)

XVIII. BI O TI WA

From Madmen and Specialists

XX. ON FIRE TODAY

Choral part (“The meek…”): from “Twelve Canticles for a Zealot”

 Solo part (“What is on fire today…”): from lecture delivered upon receipt of the Obafemi Awolowo Prize For Leadership, 6 March, 2013.

“Ah, Demosthenes!” from “Two Poems for the Pen.” Published in Index on Censorship, vol. 28, 2, 3/1/99. Taylor & Francis,Ltd.Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd.

"Elegy for a Nation (For Chinua Achebe at 70)", printed in Maple Tree Literary Supplement (MTLS) in 2013 (Issue #15, May - Aug 2013 ISSN 1916-341X). Used by permission of publisher (MTLS).

Speech delivered at the second South-South Economic Summit in Asaba, Delta State, 26 April, 2012. Used by permission of The Nation, Vintage Press Limited.

"Power and Freedom/I Am Right; You are Dead," New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 19 : Issue 2, 2005, Article 24. Used by permission of the New England Journal of Public Policy.

"Transcript from an interview with Wole Soyinka." Copyright © Nobel Media AB (2005). Used by permission of Nobel Media AB.

“Twelve Canticles for a Zealot.” Copyright © 2002 by Wole Soyinka. From Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (Methuen). Used by permission of Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.

The Crossing
Katy Avery 4 • Julie Bishop 4 • Elijah Blaisdell 2 • Karen Blanchard* • Steven Bradshaw • Colin Dill • Micah Dingler • Robert Eisentrout • Allie Faulkner 4 • Ryan Fleming • Joanna Gates • Steven Hyder • Michael Jones • Heather Kayan • Heidi Kurtz • Maren Montalbano 3 • Daniel O'Dea • Becky Oehlers • Allie Porter • Daniel Schwartz • Rebecca Siler 1 • Daniel Spratlan • Elisa Sutherland 4 • Daniel Taylor

Ensemble
Doris Hall-Gulati, clarinet
Rebecca Harris, violin
Mandy Wolman, violin
Lorenzo Raval, viola
Arlen Hlusko, cello

Donald Nally, conductor
John Grecia, accompanist

Solos: 1 soprano solos II, VII, X, XII, XIII; 2 baritone solos II, IV, IX, XI, XX; 3 mezzo-soprano solos in VII, IX, XIII, XVIII; 4 soprano soloists in XVII

* sponsored by board member Beth Van de Water

Artwork — Steven Bradshaw
Engineer, Post Production — Paul Vazquez
Assistant Engineers — Lauren Kelly, Dante Portella
Design Director — Philip Blackburn
Publicity — Tim Igel
Photography — Graeme Robertson, Rebecca Oehlers