Divine Madness:
The Oratorio
Definition:
Unconventional, outrageous, unexpected, or unpredictable behavior linked to religious or spiritual pursuits.
The Divine Madness Oratorio, composed by Daniel Asia and based on the eponymous poetry book by Paul Pines, is a testament to madness as a force that drives people to create. Such individuals lived on the razor’s edge and pushed the boundaries of their minds, often self-destructing into the abyss of history. As an intense contemporary classical oratorio, Divine Madness demonstrates the chaos that gives birth to human innovation and creativity. Pines’ poems express this madness through the figures around whom they are woven, including the great American prophet of democracy Thomas Paine, as well as Van Gogh, Einstein, Heisenberg, John Winthrop, Leonard Bernstein, Telemachus, and many others.​
“… if any man come to the gates of poetry without the madness of the muses, convinced that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity be brought to naught by the poetry of madness.”
-Plato-
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