Fall of the Rebel Angels

Pieter Bruegel’s 1562 painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels depicts the conflict between the archangel Michael and the forces of heaven – rendered with white robes, elegant wings, and flowing hair – and Satan’s rebel angels – which have taken all manner of grotesque forms, chimeras of human, animal, and artificial elements – each totally different.

Aside from these strange entities, two things stood out to me. A pillar of angel bodies – innumerable powerful beings locked in a battle beyond understanding – stretching into the distance represents the unfathomable scale of the conflict, of which Bruegel depicts a minuscule slice, in space and time. But, stripped from its narrative context, the painting would become even more bizarre: an expanse of writhing, seething, weird matter. This piece pans between these different layers and characters, bound together by the narrative of the rebel angels’ fall.

The opening quotes Nicolas Gombert’s motet Media vita in morte sumus – ‘In the midst of life, we are in death’ – written at a similar time and place to Bruegel’s painting. The piece was commissioned by the Melos Sinfonia, who are performing it in the recording above.

A perusal score is available here.