Dylan Mattingly: The Wild Heart (Complete)
Contemporaneous & David Bloom
Dylan Mattingly: The Wild Heart (Complete) is the Nonesuch Records debut for composer Dylan Mattingly, performed by the ensemble Contemporaneous under conductor David Bloom with vocal soloist Iarla Ó Lionáird. Released on June 26, 2026, the “Complete” edition gathers the full five‑movement cycle The Transmutation Notebooks—Ulysses Dances, Notes for Another Life, additional central movements, Last Dance, and Past Ithaca—alongside the large‑scale orchestral work Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things), forming a roughly hour‑long portrait of Mattingly’s ecstatic, post‑minimal sound world. These pieces grow out of his six‑hour epic History of Life, which weaves together Homer’s Odyssey and Charles Darwin’s Beagle journals, so the album’s music continually navigates between mythic sea journeys, evolutionary time, and intensely personal reflections.
Critics and liner notes describe Mattingly’s language here as intensely luminous and overflowing, marked by chiming harmonies, slowly evolving rhythmic patterns, and sudden eruptions into euphoric, almost “pagan” dances. The Transmutation Notebooks takes its title from Darwin’s South American notebooks, and its movements often unfold in long, arching spans that feel synchronized with “the rhythms of the celestial orbs” before breaking into joyous grooves, while Sunt Lacrimae Rerum, written amid California wildfires in the first year of the pandemic, dwells on grief and the fragile beauty of the world. Mattingly has said that the goal of this music is to give listeners an experience of “the things we love most about being alive” and to let them be “swept over by the massive force of waves” and feel small in a vast, beautiful universe; Contemporaneous’s detailed, glowing performance and Bloom’s pacing make The Wild Heart (Complete) feel like a single, immersive journey through that vision.
Dylan Mattingly: The Wild Heart (Complete) is the Nonesuch Records debut for composer Dylan Mattingly, performed by the ensemble Contemporaneous under conductor David Bloom with vocal soloist Iarla Ó Lionáird. Released on June 26, 2026, the “Complete” edition gathers the full five‑movement cycle The Transmutation Notebooks—Ulysses Dances, Notes for Another Life, additional central movements, Last Dance, and Past Ithaca—alongside the large‑scale orchestral work Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things), forming a roughly hour‑long portrait of Mattingly’s ecstatic, post‑minimal sound world. These pieces grow out of his six‑hour epic History of Life, which weaves together Homer’s Odyssey and Charles Darwin’s Beagle journals, so the album’s music continually navigates between mythic sea journeys, evolutionary time, and intensely personal reflections.
Critics and liner notes describe Mattingly’s language here as intensely luminous and overflowing, marked by chiming harmonies, slowly evolving rhythmic patterns, and sudden eruptions into euphoric, almost “pagan” dances. The Transmutation Notebooks takes its title from Darwin’s South American notebooks, and its movements often unfold in long, arching spans that feel synchronized with “the rhythms of the celestial orbs” before breaking into joyous grooves, while Sunt Lacrimae Rerum, written amid California wildfires in the first year of the pandemic, dwells on grief and the fragile beauty of the world. Mattingly has said that the goal of this music is to give listeners an experience of “the things we love most about being alive” and to let them be “swept over by the massive force of waves” and feel small in a vast, beautiful universe; Contemporaneous’s detailed, glowing performance and Bloom’s pacing make The Wild Heart (Complete) feel like a single, immersive journey through that vision.
Dylan Mattingly: The Wild Heart (Complete)
Contemporaneous & David Bloom
Dylan Mattingly: The Wild Heart (Complete) is the Nonesuch Records debut for composer Dylan Mattingly, performed by the ensemble Contemporaneous under conductor David Bloom with vocal soloist Iarla Ó Lionáird. Released on June 26, 2026, the “Complete” edition gathers the full five‑movement cycle The Transmutation Notebooks—Ulysses Dances, Notes for Another Life, additional central movements, Last Dance, and Past Ithaca—alongside the large‑scale orchestral work Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things), forming a roughly hour‑long portrait of Mattingly’s ecstatic, post‑minimal sound world. These pieces grow out of his six‑hour epic History of Life, which weaves together Homer’s Odyssey and Charles Darwin’s Beagle journals, so the album’s music continually navigates between mythic sea journeys, evolutionary time, and intensely personal reflections.
Critics and liner notes describe Mattingly’s language here as intensely luminous and overflowing, marked by chiming harmonies, slowly evolving rhythmic patterns, and sudden eruptions into euphoric, almost “pagan” dances. The Transmutation Notebooks takes its title from Darwin’s South American notebooks, and its movements often unfold in long, arching spans that feel synchronized with “the rhythms of the celestial orbs” before breaking into joyous grooves, while Sunt Lacrimae Rerum, written amid California wildfires in the first year of the pandemic, dwells on grief and the fragile beauty of the world. Mattingly has said that the goal of this music is to give listeners an experience of “the things we love most about being alive” and to let them be “swept over by the massive force of waves” and feel small in a vast, beautiful universe; Contemporaneous’s detailed, glowing performance and Bloom’s pacing make The Wild Heart (Complete) feel like a single, immersive journey through that vision.
Dylan Mattingly: The Wild Heart (Complete) is the Nonesuch Records debut for composer Dylan Mattingly, performed by the ensemble Contemporaneous under conductor David Bloom with vocal soloist Iarla Ó Lionáird. Released on June 26, 2026, the “Complete” edition gathers the full five‑movement cycle The Transmutation Notebooks—Ulysses Dances, Notes for Another Life, additional central movements, Last Dance, and Past Ithaca—alongside the large‑scale orchestral work Sunt Lacrimae Rerum (these are the tears of things), forming a roughly hour‑long portrait of Mattingly’s ecstatic, post‑minimal sound world. These pieces grow out of his six‑hour epic History of Life, which weaves together Homer’s Odyssey and Charles Darwin’s Beagle journals, so the album’s music continually navigates between mythic sea journeys, evolutionary time, and intensely personal reflections.
Critics and liner notes describe Mattingly’s language here as intensely luminous and overflowing, marked by chiming harmonies, slowly evolving rhythmic patterns, and sudden eruptions into euphoric, almost “pagan” dances. The Transmutation Notebooks takes its title from Darwin’s South American notebooks, and its movements often unfold in long, arching spans that feel synchronized with “the rhythms of the celestial orbs” before breaking into joyous grooves, while Sunt Lacrimae Rerum, written amid California wildfires in the first year of the pandemic, dwells on grief and the fragile beauty of the world. Mattingly has said that the goal of this music is to give listeners an experience of “the things we love most about being alive” and to let them be “swept over by the massive force of waves” and feel small in a vast, beautiful universe; Contemporaneous’s detailed, glowing performance and Bloom’s pacing make The Wild Heart (Complete) feel like a single, immersive journey through that vision.