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... above earth's shadow (1985) |
solo violin and 6 players - 18'
"... I arose and sought the mill, and there I found my Angel, who, surprised asked me how I escaped? I answered, 'All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper. But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you yours?' He laughed at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms, and flew westerly thro' the night, till we were elevated above earth's shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun..."
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
I suppose when it comes to 'composition', everything in the personality becomes involved (though perhaps not obviously and certainly not intentionally). Blake is a kind of role model: English outsider, maverick prooto-surrealist, darkly pessimistic, abundantly optimistic, contradictory and paradoxical. I would also accept a 'sexual' reading of this excerpt from Blake. Angel as lover (and perhaps 'alter ego') and a partner who actively assists (through 'metaphysics') in a journey of discovery in pursuit of the unknown - but also an 'innocent' to be consumed in fiery passion.
Probably the music works its way back from the end of the quotation to the beginning - a process of recollection and reflection (in eventual tranquillity?) of the action of flinging oneself (and partner) into the body of the sun (is this body also sexualised?) Fundamentally, is Blake not also revealing a metaphor for the creative process itself? - seeking in isolation, drawing on speculative ideas (metaphysics) culturally contextualising (the 'mill'); achieving a vision (the 'harper', the 'eternal lot'); the filling of a vacuum with 'art' - simultaneous creation-destruction.
"above earth's shadow" - beyond the realm of the worldly; das ereignende
Spiegel-Spiel der Einfalt von Erde und Himmel, Göttlichen und Sterblichen.
music above world's shadow:
"The work moves the earth itself into the Open of a world and keeps
it there. The work lets the earth be an earth. Earth, self dependent, is effortless
and untiring" (Heidegger) "... our task is to impress this preliminary,
transient earth upon ourselves with so much suffering and so passionately
that its nature rises up again 'invisibly' with us" (Rilke)
© Michael Finnissy