The Anatomy of Angels

I’m currently preoccupied with writing a new trio for Amabile (a trio of clarinet, cello and piano) and wanted to share my thoughts as the ideas develop because it’s all based on a recent experience and it seems important to capture these thoughts while they are still fresh and exciting!

When we visited the Vatican Museums in May 2024 I fully expected that Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel would be the highlight of our day, and of course it was hugely impressive: in spite of the crowds, the zealous officials and the height of the ceiling, it was wonderful to see in person the art which I’ve known for so long. But what stayed with me after the visit was the memory of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s angel studies: five preparatory models for the bronze sculptures which adorn the Throne of St Peter which now sits behind the high altar at St Peter’s Basilica.

Bernini’s study-angels were made from clay and straw, based around frames of twisted iron and cane, and they still show remarkable detail even though the passage of time has crumbled much of the clay, leaving the metal frames exposed in places. Whilst some details are perfectly intact, preserving the overwhelming beauty of his sculpture, other aspects have now gone, leaving us only able to imagine how they might have looked when complete.

That’s certainly part of the fascination: art (or architecture, like a medieval castle or abbey) which is no longer complete forces us to work harder in order to project a speculative image of how it might have been, and that is certainly true of Bernini’s angels. But, for me, I also see them as simultaneously emblematic of both growth and decay: growth because we can see very clearly how the artist built them up from a skeleton of twisted metal, adding layers to create a rough shape before sculpting the fine detail. We can see inside the sculptures and better understand his creative process, and how these incredible, delicate structures were crafted as part of a bigger process to design and realise the bronze angels of the throne. They are a crucial stage of the development, half-way between a hazy, intangible idea and the final enduring masterpiece. But at the same time we see vividly the effects of decay, how the clay has dried out and turned back into dust, and how the angels might eventually rot away until there was nothing left (had the museum not spent a sizeable fortune preserving them in this semi-perished state).

My piece is called Anatomy of Angels, scored for the very un-baroque ensemble of clarinet, cello and piano. It is cast in five short, well-contrasted movements (the five angels, perhaps?) and in each I’ve tried to capture something of the incompleteness of the Bernini but also the simultaneous presentation of growth and decay. Each movement begins with a single idea to which other layers are added, but the original idea remains present throughout: it serves as the frame around which the structures have been built. Towards the end of each movement the music subsides (or decays) to a single idea again, but not necessarily the one with which it began. The five movements overlap slightly, to form a continuous musical span in which the senses of decay and re-growth become part of the same process, and - in movements two and four - the added layers deliberately suggest a sort of baroque melodic movement to make the connection more tangible in the music’s content, though the notes are entirely my own and there is no quotation of earlier music here.

Later on during our trip I stumbled across Bernini’s final resting place, close to the altar at the magnificent church of Santa Maria Maggiore, so I was able to pay homage to the man who – although less well-known than some of his Italian contemporaries, probably now remembered primarily as an architect rather than artist – did so much to develop a baroque style of sculpture.

Finally I must thank John Goodby for pointing out the similarity between the subject of this piece and that of my recent setting of Dylan Thomas' poem The force that through the green fuse... (part of As Long as Forever Is) which also considers the simultaneous existence, even the interdependence, of growth and decay, a recurring theme in Thomas' poetry. Anatomy of Angels will be performed by Amabile at Late Music in York on Saturday 2nd November 2024. All pictures are my own.