Music, Being, and the Spaces Between
Previously titled 'Meditations on Music and Spirit
Instrumentation: flute/alto flute/piccolo; clarinet/bass clarinet; violin; violoncello; vibraphone/marimba; harp; piano. Speaker (optional)
Year: 2005 - 23
Duration: 30 - 40 minutes
Music, Being, and the Spaces Between consists of twelve interludes in which each interlude's title refers to various experiences, or poetic representations, of one's being in the world. The change of title from 'Meditations on Music and Spirit' was made in order to avoid any reference to pseudo-spirituality or new age thought.
Each interlude is accompanied by a commentary which functions like a poetic and/or analytical program note. The commentaries hover somewhere between the experiential and explanatory. These commentaries are fundamentally humanist in conception and informed by phenomenology and hermeneutics. The interludes can be performed without any of the included texts. However, a performance can involve a speaker who reads shorter abridged versions of the commentaries.
The full texts (definition and commentary) can be printed in a program with the option of projecting only the title of each movement onto a screen or wall using the Herculanum font. For example:
Interpreting music with words, especially anything to do with notions of being is arguably subjective and not definitive. In their attempt to negotiate that slippery space (as referenced in the title), each interlude's title and commentary tries to make connections between music and various understandings of human experiences. The commentaries refer to:
i) phenomena and metaphors that are used to express and interpret one's relationship with, and understanding of, the external world.
ii) the techniques used by musicians to evoke that phenomenon or metaphor.
Relationships between language, words and music have a rich history going back to medieval times and earlier. One approach used in Music, Being and the Spaces Between is music and rhetoric, used by composers in the 16th and 17th centuries where various musical tropes were associated with rhetorical figures of persuasion and formal argument. Affektenlehre, the representation of affects or passions, from the Baroque era is another example of this approach. Both these were gradually superseded by more rigorous approaches to music theory. However, the linking of musical tropes to specific emotions, experiences or concepts has never gone away as can be heard in musical word painting, 19th century program music, many film music scores and 19th century operas.
Enthusiasm
Mourning/ Corpus Christie
Grace
Soaring
Peace
Flight
Resonance
Epiphany
Joy
Lingering
Void
Similarly in Music, Being, and the Spaces Between, rhetorical tropes are used such as ascending scales in 'Flight'. While these older rhetorical techniques are still used in various movements of Music, Being, and the Spaces Between, other more abstract rhetorical devices are used such as analogy, ellipsis and metaphor. For example, the title of a movement, as in 'Flight', may relate to the listener's experience or interpretation of that whole movement. The title forms a type of ellipsis in which the listener's experience bridges the gap between the title and the music thereby creating a sense of meaningfulness.
These twelve musical interludes are also part of a much larger work composed for choir and chamber ensemble titled: The A to Z of Music and Spirit: a user's guide.
Score and parts to Music, Being, and the Spaces Between can be obtained by contacting the composer - https://www.richardvella.net/contact
ABC Classic Recordings of Music, Being, and the Spaces Between are available from the Australian Music Centre (originally titled The A to Z of Spiritual Music). Recorded and performed by Marshall McGuire (harp); Christine Draeger (flutes); Margery Smith (clarinets); Alex D’Elia (violin); Adrian Wallis (violoncello); Daryl Pratt (vibraphone/marimba); Bernadette Balkus (piano); Edward Primrose (conductor); Stephen Adams (producer).