Orchestra
SKU:
HL.14028038
Composed
by Poul Ruders. Music
Sales America. Classical.
Score. 95 pages. Music
Sales #KP00294. Published
by Music Sales
(HL.14028038).
ISBN
9788759854730.
12.0x16.5x0.3 inches.
English.
The word
GONG is saturated with
associations: the
splendour of the Orient,
mysticism, drama, loud
metallic clangour,
violent impact, etc. The
present piece draws upon
all those connotations,
but it is primarily a
symphonic drama about the
life and behaviour of the
sun, our closest star and
prime source of life on
Earth. Describing the sun
in music is not a new
idea, of course; during a
visit to Greece, Carl
Nielsen was inspired by
the orbit of the sun and
its very un-Danish
ferocity and thus wrote
the Helios Overture. GONG
is a Helios Overture too,
of sorts, albeit more
abstract. Recent
astronomical research
shows, that the surface
of the sun reverberates
like a gong, in four
different, simultaneous
tempi (not directly
depicted in the score,
though); the sun looks
like a GONG, - the O in
the written work looks
like the sun; there is
even a solar research
group called GONG (Global
Oscillation Network
Group). Formally the
composition follows the
life and fate of the sun,
from the initial
explotional birth through
the hyper-activity as
energy source as we know
it today to the final,
predicted flaring up and
collapse into a so-called
white dwarf. But - being
a musical composition,
not an astrophysical
thesis - GONG is brought
to its compositional
conclusion by a real
concert-ending, a chord
taken from the middle of
the piece and sustained
over several bars, from
virtual nothingness to
full force.