David Lang

So I took Hans Christian Andersen's story of the little match girl, the poor girl who is trying to sell matches on a cold street and dies freezing to death and goes to heaven.

And I intercut that with the crowd scenes from the Bach St.

Matthew Passion, where the crowd is responding to the suffering of Jesus Christ.

So I took Jesus out, and I put the little match girl in, and I didn't really know what was going to happen.

I thought maybe this is an experiment which will be completely blasphemous, and people will be throwing bricks through my windows and things like this.

And instead you won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

Yeah, I took it really seriously.

I was surprised and very happy that it meant something to people, and it won the Pulitzer Prize.

And after that...

I had immediately a lot of requests to write other vocal music, which I'd never really thought of before.

And when I started doing it, I decided that I really loved it, that it really was a huge part of something that I'd been missing.

I don't really know what took me so long.

It feels so natural for me now to think of a text and then imagine how I might sing it.

But I think part of it is that it's very abstract to write for a violin or a cello or a flute.

And if I imagine what is important to me emotionally, and then I have to channel that thing into my

This particular instrumental range and fingerings and practicalities, it's one step removed from my own emotional life.

But if I sing something myself that I know is going to be sung by someone else, I get to feel it.

And somehow for me, that makes it a lot more powerful.

One way I think about it is like the difference between watching a movie on your television in black and white and seeing it in Technicolor in a big theater with big sound.

You know the plot, you know the characters, you know how the shapes work.