First Performance
April 26, 2007 Chanticleer
Metrolopitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
Instrumentation
Male choir or SATB Choir (12 minimum)
Duration
13'
Listen
Program Notes
A part of Chanticleer’s Mass project And On Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass, in Gloria (Everywhere) I set a poem of the 13th Century sufi poet Jelaleddin Rumi. Perhaps one of the greatest mystic poets, he also founded the Order of Dervishes (Whirling Dervishes). The Sufis believe that the goal of man is to emancipate oneself from human thoughts and wishes, needs and senses, so one becomes a part of, a mirror of, god. Through the whirling that can go on for hours, the dervishes are able to achieve emancipation. Rumi's poetry is about the pure love for, and the glory of god, seeking and finding god in everything we encounter, and the desire and yearning for becoming one with the Diety. In setting this poem I tried to convey the strong yearning for god with searching lines, at times incomplete, breathless. The glorification and the ecstatic anticipation of unification is portrayed with more direct textures. Of course I am thinking about what Rumi's world means to me in sounds, within my musical language. This surely includes Ottoman, Turkish, as well as Western music. The following four lines from this poem well represents the spirit of this work: Moslems and Christians and Jews raising their hands to the sky their chanting voice in unison begins to arrive
|
