David Lang

They never gave up.

I had a performance when I was 27 or whatever with the Cleveland Orchestra and my mother in tears after the performance leaned down and I thought, I'm finally going to get the approval that I've always wanted.

And instead she said, there's still time to go to medical school.

How did you feel about that?

I told my parents they probably shouldn't come to any of my concerts for a while.

And is that what happened?

That's what happened, yeah.

Did they ever come around?

My mother, unfortunately, didn't live long enough to see me make a living, but my father lived quite a long time and ended up being totally fine with my being a musician.

I'm glad to hear that.

That's actually the best thing that the Pulitzer Prize is good for, is getting one's parents off one's back.

I wrote this piece because I had this idea about how to make a new kind of passion, which I could believe.

So how does that work?

I love Bach, but I'm not Christian.

So there's a limit to how close I can get to the true emotion of what those pieces are really aiming for.

And I went to the St.

Matthew Passion, which I love, and I thought, you know, what gives the Passion format its power?

It's people looking at the suffering of Jesus and then saying to themselves, maybe noticing that suffering could make me a better person if noticing that suffering could change my life.

I could be a better person.

We could live in a better world.