SKU: PR.111402890

ISBN 9781491134672. UPC: 680160685264.

Whatâ??s in a name? While the title is French for â??Eight Flower Songs,â? the texts are all in English. The poemsâ?? flowers metaphorically evoke fragrance, love and loss, life and death, rebirth and regrowth. Perhaps the texture and beauty of Gordonâ??s music are themselves French. The 20-minute song cycle draws on poems from Wordsworth to Dorothy Parker, as well as from contemporary poets including the composer himself.
When So-Chung Shinn came to me with the idea of commissioning a song cycle with her spectacular husband Tony Lee, she had in mind something having to do with flowers. Tony had asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and she said she wanted to be behind the creating of a new work. Lucky me, I was the recipient of the commission. So-Chung sent me a little description of all the flowers she loves, but I had to take the idea and create a narrative in my head.It is always a matter of pleasing the commissioner, yet coming up with something you can get behind and hear music for as well. I already knew I wanted to use my â??Tulipsâ? poem which is really about the arc of a relationship as represented through the life span of the Tulips, and, in many ways, disappointment; and Dorothy Parkerâ??s â??One Perfect Rose,â? which is wry, bitter, cynical, and funny, in a way only Dorothy Parker can so pithily express.I thought of Jane Kenyonâ??s exquisite â??Peonies at Dusk,â? because knowing she died so young (46) of leukemia, the poem has such a particular resonance, almost humanizing the Peonies, casting the moon as a sentient being, illustrating so beautifully how connected everything is, alive here, and revolving around these exquisite blossoms. Then, I remembered her husband Donald Hallâ??s poem â??Her Garden,â? which he wrote after Jane died, his grief intermingled with his inability to care for what she had created, to keep alive what so represented her aliveness, broken as he was, and I felt I already had a story.I found the Wordsworth, because it felt like pure joy to me, but also, if each of the songs has a color in my head, â??The Daffodilsâ? is pure yellow and a good place to start. My partner Kevin and I live on a lake, and every year, the first Daffodils, the shock of yellows, the oranges, the blinding whites, after the long snowy winters, sing of the newness that is about to enfold us in its green miraculousness.At first, the cycle ended with the Langston Hughes poem â??Cycle,â? or â??New Flowers,â? because it was lovely, and about rebirth, which is obviously optimistic, and apt, but then, my friend Telmo Dos Santos, a wonderful Canadian poet whom I met at Banff, sent me his poem â??Afterlife With Lilacs,â? having no idea what I was working on. I felt I had to add it because it is so dazzling, and it immediately felt like the missing link. Finally, there were unfortunately rights issues, namely, we could not, no how, get in touch with the Langston Hughes Estate, after so many happy collaborations.After almost a yearâ??s frustration, I wrote my own text, â??Play, Orpheus,â? which ended up being fortuitous, because the first time I met So-Chung, she entered the room and the most exquisite scent of Lillies of the Valley, Muguet de Bois, filled the room. I went right over to her and rudely put my nose to her neck, for the intoxication of the scent. So â??Play, Orpheusâ? is for So-Chung, to remind us of the precious treasures of this world flowers remind us of. Everything and everyone lives and dies, lives and dies. Death and resurrection.And of course, this is music, this is song, so the inclusion of the God of music, Orpheus, seems apt. Huit Chansons de Fleurs is really about what flowers represent, their radiance, their flickering impermanence, the way they are used to celebrate, as well as to mourn...... and of course, their fragrance. Their fragrance.Ricky Ian GordonJuly 28, 2021.

SKU: PR.114419980

UPC: 680160681723. 9 x 12 inches.

The ancient Egyptian empire began around 3100 B.C. and continued for over 3000 years until Alexander the Great conquered the country in 332 B.C. Over the centuries, the Egyptian empire grew and flourished into a highly developed society. They invented hieroglyphics, built towering pyramids (including the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the World), and the created many household items we still use today, including toothbrushes, toothpaste, eyeliner, black ink, and the forerunner of modern-day paper. Included among their achievements were a series of highly developed funerary practices and beliefs in the Afterlife. As the average lifespan of an Egyptian hovered around 30 years, living past the death of oneAs physical body was a legitimate concern. Egyptians believed that upon death, their souls would undertake a harrowing journey through the Netherworld. If they survived the horrific creatures and arduous trials that awaited them, then their souls would be reunified with their bodies (hence the need to preserve the body through mummification) and live forever in a perfect version of the life they had lived in Egypt. To achieve this, Egyptians devised around 200 magical spells and incantations to aid souls on the path to the Afterlife. These spells are collectively called The Book of the Dead. Particular spells would be chosen by the family of the deceased and inscribed on the tombAs walls and scrolls of papyrus, as well as on a stone scarab placed over the deceasedAs heart. Subsequent collections of spells and mortuary texts, such as The Book of Gates, assisted a soul in navigating the twelve stages of the Netherworld. Not only did these spells protect and guide the soul on this dangerous path, but they also served as a safeguard against any unbecoming behavior an Egyptian did while alive. For instance, if a person had robbed another while alive, there was a spell that would prevent the soulAs heart from revealing the truth when in the Hall of Judgment. Rites for the Afterlife follows the path of a soul to the Afterlife. In Inscriptions from the Book of the Dead (movement 1), the soul leaves the body and begins the journey, protected by spells and incantations written on the tombAs walls. In Passage though the Netherworld (movement 2), the soul is now on a funerary barque, being towed through the Netherworld by four of the regionAs inhabitants. We hear the soul slowly chanting incantations as the barque encounters demons, serpents, crocodiles, lakes of fire, and other terrors. The soul arrives at The Hall of Judgment in movement 3. Standing before forty-two divine judges, the soul addresses each by name and gives a A!negative confessionA(r) connected to each judge (i.e. A!I did not rob,A(r) A!I did not do violence,A(r) and so on). Afterwards, the soulAs heart is put on a scale to be weighed against a feather of MaAat, the goddess of truth. If the heart weighs more than the feather, it will be eaten by Ammut, a hideous creature that lies in wait below the scale, and the soul will die a second and permanent death (this was the worst fear of the Egyptians). But if the heart is in balance with the feather, the soul proceeds onward. The final stage of the journey is the arrival at The Field of Reeds (movement 4), which is a perfect mirror image of the soulAs life in ancient Egypt. The soul reunites with deceased family members, makes sacrifices to the Egyptian gods and goddess, harvests crops from plentiful fields of wheat under a brilliant blue sky, and lives forever next to the abundant and nourishing waters of the Nile. Rites for the Afterlife was commissioned by the Barlow Endowment on behalf of the Akropolis Reed Quintet, Calefax Reed Quintet, and the Brigham Young University Reed Quintet. -S.G.

SKU: HL.49018099

ISBN 9790001158428. UPC: 884088567347. 8.25x11.75x0.457 inches. Latin - German.

On letting go(Concerning the selection of the texts) In the selection of the texts, I have allowed myself to be motivated and inspired by the concept of 'letting go'. This appears to me to be one of the essential aspects of dying, but also of life itself. We humans cling far too strongly to successful achievements, whether they have to do with material or ideal values, or relationships of all kinds. We cannot and do not want to let go, almost as if our life depended on it. As we will have to practise the art of letting go at the latest during our hour of death, perhaps we could already make a start on this while we are still alive. Tagore describes this farewell with very simple but strikingly vivid imagery: 'I will return the key of my door'. I have set this text for tenor solo. Here I imagine, and have correspondingly noted in a certain passage of the score, that the protagonist finds himself as though 'in an ocean' of voices in which he is however not drowning, but immersing himself in complete relaxation. The phenomenon of letting go is described even more simply and tersely in Psalm 90, verse 12: 'So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom'. This cannot be expressed more plainly.I have begun the requiem with a solo boy's voice singing the beginning of this psalm on a single note, the note A. This in effect says it all. The work comes full circle at the culmination with a repeat of the psalm which subsequently leads into a resplendent 'lux aeterna'. The intermediate texts of the Requiem which highlight the phenomenon of letting go in the widest spectrum of colours originate on the one hand from the Latin liturgy of the Messa da Requiem (In Paradisum, Libera me, Requiem aeternam, Mors stupebit) and on the other hand from poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore and Rainer Maria Rilke.All texts have a distinctive positive element in common and view death as being an organic process within the great system of the universe, for example when Hermann Hesse writes: 'Entreiss dich, Seele, nun der Zeit, entreiss dich deinen Sorgen und mache dich zum Flug bereit in den ersehnten Morgen' ['Tear yourself way , o soul, from time, tear yourself away from your sorrows and prepare yourself to fly away into the long-awaited morning'] and later: 'Und die Seele unbewacht will in freien Flugen schweben, um im Zauberkreis der Nacht tief und tausendfach zu leben' ['And the unfettered soul strives to soar in free flight to live in the magic sphere of the night, deep and thousandfold']. Or Joseph von Eichendorff whose text evokes a distant song in his lines: 'Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flugel aus. Flog durch die stillen Lande, als floge sie nach Haus' ['And my soul spread its wings wide. Flew through the still country as if homeward bound.']Here a strong romantically tinged occidental resonance can be detected which is however also accompanied by a universal spirit going far beyond all cultures and religions. In the beginning was the sound Long before any sort of word or meaningful phrase was uttered by vocal chords, sounds, vibrations and tones already existed. This brings us back to the music. Both during my years of study and at subsequent periods, I had been an active participant in the world of contemporary music, both as percussionist and also as conductor and composer. My early scores had a somewhat adventurous appearance, filled with an abundance of small black dots: no rhythm could be too complicated, no register too extreme and no harmony too dissonant. I devoted myself intensely to the handling of different parameters which in serial music coexist in total equality: I also studied aleatory principles and so-called minimal music.I subsequently emigrated and took up residence in Spain from where I embarked on numerous travels over the years to India, Africa and South America. I spent repeated periods during this time as a resident in non-European countries. This meant that the currents of contemporary music swept past me vaguely and at a great distance. What I instead absorbed during this period were other completely new cultures in which I attempted to immerse myself as intensively as possible.I learned foreign languages and came into contact with musicians of all classes and styles who had a different cultural heritage than my own: I was intoxicated with the diversity of artistic potential.Nevertheless, the further I distanced myself from my own Western musical heritage, the more this returned insistently in my consciousness.The scene can be imagined of sitting somewhere in the middle of the Brazilian jungle surrounded by the wailing of Indians and out of the blue being provided with the opportunity to hear Beethoven's late string quartets: this can be a heart-wrenching experience, akin to an identity crisis. This type of experience can also be described as cathartic. Whatever the circumstances, my 'renewed' occupation with the 'old' country would not permit me to return to the point at which I as an audacious young student had maltreated the musical parameters of so-called contemporary music. A completely different approach would be necessary: an extremely careful approach, inching my way gradually back into the Western world: an approach which would welcome tradition back into the fold, attempt to unfurl the petals and gently infuse this tradition with a breath of contemporary life.Although I am aware that I will not unleash a revolution or scandal with this approach, I am nevertheless confident as, with the musical vocabulary of this Requiem, I am travelling in an orbit in which no ballast or complex structures will be transported or intimated: on the contrary, I have attempted to form the message of the texts in music with the naivety of a 'homecomer'. Harald WeissColonia de San PedroMarch 2009.