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“How often do we sacrifice freedom and truthfulness for security? Where is the space for humans who are responsible to themselves? Can that space be found in the middle of society?” Librettist Christian Lehnert poses these questions in his introductory notes for Reiko Füting’s chamber opera Mechthild, based on the life of a medieval female Christian mystic from Magdeburg, Germany. Füting delves into the musicality inherent in Mechthild’s Middle and High German texts, using quotation as a quasi-temporal portal to evoke multiple eras. The opera asks the listener to step outside our cultivated security in the “middle of society” and consider the life of a 13th century ascetic who eschewed the safety of the monastery to find spirituality and connection in the act of living. What might that kind of act of courage look like today? Füting’s approach to text setting frames the soundworld of the piece. Words are mined for their micro-components; syllables and fricatives are expanded and elongated to spawn new textures. In the opening scene, we hear harmonic pillars and melodic fragments in the chorus that frame subsequent explorations of hybrid vocalizations and dry percussive sounds. The progression of the meta-piece is constantly paused in order to examine the variety of non-pitched vocal sounds further. In this way, the movement is an introductory prelude that introduces the vocabulary of the piece. In Scene 2, vocal parts are more intricately integrated with ensemble parts, singing and speaking in rhythmic unison with instrumental gestures that give them shape and color. The rest of the ensemble provides textural context in undulating waves. Repetition with subtle variation is also an important component of Füting’s work; phrase fragments are pored over from all angles and minutely adjusted with each iteration. The development of these ideas mirrors thought patterns; we often think elliptically, circling back to similar ideas as we move progressively forward. Harmonic structures are often anchored by a central pitch around which Füting creates shades of expression. The piece unfolds as a kind of fantastic meditation, repeating text shards as mantras while expansive textures swirl around and create an otherworldly atmosphere. Sometimes the texture strips down to only voices, as in the brief duo in Scene 3.6, a momentary pas de deux that highlights the registral contrast between a male and female voice. Scene 4 opens dramatically, with an intertwined musical mechanism featuring a prominent glissando in the bass voice, intoned text on a repeated tone in the tenor, rattling on the snare drum, and punctuations in the ensemble. It is typical of Füting’s hybrid ensemble writing, creating an organism that takes on a life beyond the sum of its component parts. Act 2, Scene 5 contains some of the opera’s most elegiac, lyrical music, with two sopranos floating downward in a repeating harmonic progression. Scene 6 “Descent into Hell” is more activated and charged with consequential energy, with pulsing movement in the strings and percussion driving underneath choral swells and undulations and a measured spoken line. In Act 2, Scene 7, “Naught”, phrases and words are divided up by syllable between singers, accompanied delicately by winds and percussion. Scene 9 features a disembodied drone that occasionally expands, accordion-like, into dissonant sonorities before contracting again into consonance. It is striking for how distinct it is from the harmonic treatment in the piece up to this moment, and points to a transformation that has occurred over the course of the opera. The piece closes on a long sustain in the medium high register of the organ – not a settled resolution but instead perhaps a clarion call for the engaged space an ascetic must seek, vigilant yet connected. While it concerns itself with questions of faith and the divine, Mechthild remains relatively sober throughout. Füting’s writing in the piece is patiently measured, marking each step along the journey whether it be filled with drama or illuminated by calm. The opera captures the spiritual and ascetic path elegantly, as a sustained activity of a steadfast will, not a revelatory catharsis. – Dan Lippel