SKU: AP.1-ADV6010
ISBN 9783892215301. UPC: 805095060102. English.
It is natural as we age to contemplate the finality of passing on, if not personally, then certainly as an effect from others around you whom have left this space. Having to endure the passing of family and friends is of course very trying. This is especially true when the perception is that someone passed before their time though there are those of us who believe in fate implying that the Force works in its own mysterious way. Composers often commemorate passings with music as a means to mourn and as well to celebrate the life of an individual who meant something to them. Such is the nature of this piece. Movement 1---Past uses as source material themes I wrote for my mother Frances and father Leo when they passed; movement 2---Present centers around a choral (Prayer for Mike) I wrote for my dear friend, saxophonist Michael Brecker when he passed a few years ago. This same period also saw the passing of other friends and associates whom I had known for years, all way too premature, beginning with JF Jenny Clarke and Bob Berg, Hans Gruber, Thomas Stowsand, David Baker, James Williams, Dennis Irwin, John Stubblefield. The final movement---Future is a requiem of sorts for all of us still here. With its improvisational character, it is meant to suggest the positive implications of living life to its fullest. Titles: Past * Present * Future.
SKU: PE.EP73479
ISBN 9790577019888. 297 x 210mm inches. English.
At First Light was commissioned by Eric Bruskin, a resident of Philadelphia, USA, in memory of his mother. Eric had a longstanding enthusiasm for my work, and I was touched to be the person he approached for a task which is both a privilege and a daunting responsibility. In a sense, no music can ever measure up to the weight of love or the hope of consolation vested in it under such circumstances - but in memory I carry the deaths of both my own parents, and I was able to draw upon that. Eric's fondness for my Cello Sonata (itself written in memoriam) led him to ask that I include a solo 'cello part in the new work - but his attachment also to my polyphonic sacred choral writing meant that he wanted a centrepiece which would be both a showcase of that approach and the celebration of a life well lived. Therefore, the seven movements of At First Light arrange themselves as a series of slow meditations surrounding an exuberant 9-minute motet in which the lamenting cello falls temporarily silent.Eric's Jewish faith meant that approaching an agnostic humanist brought up within the Anglican tradition was hardly free of problems! Gradually, though, I was able to win his approval for a collated mosaic of texts. This embraces some liturgical Latin (necessary for the motet) as the shared preserve of broad western culture in general, but balances it with a secular approach to loss, celebration, remembrance and the many shades of our mourning those whom we see no longer. Eric was adamant that he did not want the title Requiem; but what has emerged is still a form of semi-secular Requiem in all but name, taking its title instead from a phrase in the poem by Thomas Blackburn set as the third movement. This seemed to suggest succinctly how the loss of one very close to us is an awakening into an unfamiliar world where everything is changed. Following the exuberant central movement, the texts by the Lebanese-born Kahlil Gibran and the US, Kentuckian poet Wendell Berry first address the departed loved one directly, then place us within an imaginary funeral cortege, where the perennial and universal in human experience become personal without subscribing explicitly to any particular faith (or lack of it). The final text of all is a translation of a Hebraic prayer, requested and provided by Eric Bruskin, which serves to mirror its Latin counterpart heard at the outset.Throughout , the lamenting cello represents a commentary on the experience articulated in the text. It evokes and, in a sense, tries to embrace and sanctify the individual existential journeys of the bereft, as they in turn seek to make their own sense of what the short-lived Second World War poet Alun Lewis called 'the unbearable beauty of the dead' (movement 5).In a modern world hostage to ever greater menace, displacement, bloodshed and anguish, I hope fervently that this music not only brings a measure of solace to the person who commissioned it, but also makes its own small contribution to bailing out the sinking ship of humanity.
