WORLD PREMIERE

03/08/2012 Cesis Art Festival, Festival Hall at the Cesis Sports Complex (Latvia), Kamer Choir and Riga Sinfonietta, cond. Normunds Šn?

NOTES

The piece is an extremely slow and surreal odyssey from the ‘clouds’ to the ‘earth’ in both physical and metaphorical senses. The musical structure is based on the canon of three layers: strings and voices make a temporal and timbral opposition, as being a representation of ‘instrumental’ and ‘human’ nature respectively; while wind instruments take the middle ground, as ‘breathing instruments’, and help connect the two opposites by creating a smooth ‘thermodynamic’ transformation of the sonic substance. The three layers may be likened to the states of water in its hydrological cycle (vapour, liquid, and ice) and their cyclical conversion processes (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and infiltration). In the course of musical development, thèse phenomena become rendered into transformations of timbre and harmony, undulation in the density of micro-polyphonic texture, accumulation and dissolution of different layers, pulsation of dynamic crescendos-diminuendos, ebbs and flows of macroregisters and micro-intonations.

The directions of these changes are guided by the progressive cyclical form where every cycle is longer in duration and wider in register than previous, gradually embracing the maximum range from the highest possible violin harmonics at the beginning to the lowest open string of double bass at the very end of the composition. The harmonies are based on descending sequences of a diatonic scale, which move in the four circles of major thirds.

A poem by the celebrated Latvian poet Knuts Skujenieks provided a relevant verbal and poetic expression to all these acoustic processes and helped elevate the work’s meaning to an almost sacred dimension. The sung text is nonetheless ‘cleansed’ of consonants, thereby disposing of unnecessary sound attacks: the content is left to the singers, who read the full text but mask consonants and articulate only vowels. The similar method is used in the instrumental parts, when all the notes produced by the string and wind players start from complete silence, reach the général level of dynamics and vanish into silence. This creates and impression of ‘underwater’ pulsations and helps unify timbres and homogenise texture. Skujenieks’ poem was chosen not only because of its content, but also because of the poet’s connections with Lithuania as part of historical, cultural and linguistic kinship between our two countries. This connection is very important to me and has already resulted in some continuing collaborations with Latvian artists.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, and making it bud and flourish, so that it yealds see for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaia 55:10-11)