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A Cappella (1985) |
6 solo voices - 16'
A Cappella for 6 solo voices was written in 1985 in response to a commission from the London Sinfonietta Voices. The piece begins with fast repeated vowel articulations creating a whirl of harmonic textures between the 6 voices. Gradually this music transforms into a setting of Rainer Maria Rilke's beautiful and evocative poem To Music. The poet speaks of music transcending words: "You speech where speech ends". In A cappella the use of text eventually transcends the purely abstract vocal sonority.
© Simon Bainbridge
Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
stillness of pictures. You speech, where speeches
end. You time,
vertically poised on the courses of vanishing hearts.
Feelings for what? Oh, you transformations
of feelings into ... audible landscape!
You stranger: Music. Space that's outgrown us,
heart-space. Innermost ours,
that, passing our limits, outsurges, -
holiest parting:
where what is within surrounds us
as practised horizon, as other
side of the air,
pure,
gigantic,
no longer lived in.
Reprinted by permission of J.B.Leishman and Chatto & Windus: The Hogarth Press © 1964