Elliot Goldenthal isn’t the least daunted. He’s calm, in fact, a sign of the assurance of youth or the tranquilizing effect of jet lag.
Goldenthal is not long off a plane from Italy, and he’s talking about his newest job: to write an hour-long symphonic work that encompasses the human suffering of the Vietnam War.
All of it – the pain of the Vietnamese as well the Americans; the resentment between North and South, hawk and dove; the wounds borne by the warrior and inflicted on the innocent; the invisible scars of the veteran and the conscientious objector; the wisdom gained through time and the lessons to be offered the future; what we’ll teach the children.
Children, in the ambitious early plans announced Tuesday by the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, are especially important. The yet-unwritten work, which will premiere at the Performing Arts Center in April 1995, will enlist the orchestra, Pacific Chorale, and a choir of children from the local Vietnamese community.
The task of composing this musical monument falls to Brooklyn-born Goldenthal, 39, who never went to war in Vietnam. But he’s not intimidated by taking on a musical work that orchestra officials hope will do with music what the Vietnam Memorial – The Wall – does with black granite and a silent litany of names.
“The subject is so large and exists on so many levels,” Goldenthal said early this week. “I’d be naive if I thought this was going to be the last word on the Vietnam War.
“My aim is not to be political but to express the humanity and dignity of the war,” Goldenthal said. “This will only be one piece of music about the Vietnam War, and I hope there are many more written after it.”
Goldenthal, who lives in New York, didn’t fight in the war, but like many in his generation he closely observed its toll. Holding a high lottery number that protected him from the draft, Goldenthal played trumpet in his high school band and watched friends take divergent paths – some to war in Southeast Asia, others to self-imposed exile in Canada.
Goldenthal also spent considerable time in veterans hospitals, accompanying his father, a disabled veteran of World War II. “I talked to a lot of Vietnam vets who were having a bad time in those hospitals,” he said.
In commissioning a Vietnam memorial in music, the Pacific Symphony is undertaking a project it clearly hopes will attract national attention. The preliminary budget is $500,000, which must be raised, and includes a recording on the Koch International label.
The orchestra is negotiating to take the piece to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, after its premiere. If all the plans come to fruition, including a possible television program and free performances in the community, the price tag could top $1 million.
“Very few orchestras do a project of this size and scope,” said Louis Spisto, the PSO’s executive director.
The idea to write a musical memorial of the Vietnam War came from Carl St. Clair, the Pacific Symphony’s music director.
“It’s been brewing in me for some years,” said St. Clair, 41. “The Vietnam War lives in many people’s minds, in our psyches. I’ve always thought it should be embraced by music.”
To make the broadest possible statement, the orchestra will solicit Vietnamese viewpoints. Members of Orange County’s sizable Vietnamese community – numbered as high as 150,000 in some estimates – have formed a committee to work with the orchestra.
“The war’s over almost 20 years now, and we should try to put the pain behind us and work more closely together,” said Khoa Le, 60, a composer and producer for local Vietnamese television who left South Vietnam in 1975.
“The aim is to bridge the gap between the different cultures. I think it will work.”
Orchestra officials are excited about the potential for using music to build this bridge. “The Pacific Symphony has the responsibility of being the orchestra for all of Orange County,” said Spisto.
“The Vietnamese community is a huge population that we’ve not addressed, and this project is a means to do that.”
The idea germinated when St. Clair was flying back to California following a guest-conducting engagement two years ago. Reading a magazine interview with Washington columnist Art Buchwald, St. Clair was struck when Buchwald observed that the Vietnam Memorial seemed to be “crying out for music.” Buchwald said he’d even tried to persuade Henry Mancini to write a piece.
“When I read that article, it gave me the final spark. I said, ‘We’ve got to get this project going,’” St. Clair said.
Instead of calling Mancini, St. Clair called film composer John Williams, a godfather of sorts to the Pacific Symphony. Williams was enthusiastic. After sounding out a few more composers – including John Corigliano and William Bolcom – St. Clair called Goldenthal.
“I wanted a composer who dealt with multimedia productions,” St. Clair said. “I kept hearing Elliot’s name, and when I listened to his music, I knew he was the right composer.”
Goldenthal, a student of Corigliano who also studied informally with Aaron Copland, has written music for the theater, such as the Obie Award-winning work Juan Darien – A Carnival Mass. He’s also a film composer, following in the footsteps of his teacher Corigliano. Goldenthal has written scores for “Pet Sematary”, “Drugstore Cowboy”, and “Alien 3.”
“I was attracted by the clash of cultures, and also the chance to continue expanding Western music into Asia,” said Goldenthal, who will visit Vietnam as part of his preparation.
“Africa is already our sister ‘country’ in terms of music, but Asia is also being more and more felt.”
Because the commission is only just announced, Goldenthal’s plans for the work are very preliminary. But he said he will augment the orchestra with traditional Vietnamese and other Asian instruments.
The text for the piece has not been determined. “I hope maybe to find words written by non-professional writers, the soldiers and the people who lived through this war,” Goldenthal said.
“My great challenge will be to find the singular thread that ties it all together.”
The project also runs the risk of being burned by the divisive politics of the war, which can flare at any time, as hecklers proved during President Clinton’s recent speech at the Vietnam Memorial.
“I know there’s a danger in that,” St. Clair said. “I think it will be a failure if we don’t have some vets in the audience, or families who lost a son or daughter in the war.
“What we want to do is reach out and embrace people, to respect and celebrate the loss, the joys, the whole array of emotions of the war. This is not a requiem; this is about people.”