Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes
for the world.
World Premiere
03/07/2003
St. Sebald, Nürnberg
Andreas Jost, organ
Composer's Notes
- Wings and Shadows
2. Embraces
3. Mirror Fight
Commissioned by the Siemens Arts Program for the 52th Nuremberg Organ Week 2003
Angelic figures. They have peopled the imagery of the religions and painting since the beginning of time. They mark the boundary of reality as we can know it and promise to lead us to ascertained events. Sometimes they appear on tacky plates, sometimes in our dreams; they are the secret of our search for a place where we will one day find ourselves as we think that they may be preserving that which we have lost in ourselves.
In the bible, angels appear in three main roles: as announcers, consolers and warriors. In this order, these three different sides of the angel have become the motto of my organ piece. It concludes with the expulsion from paradise, a world of pre-conscious harmony, leading to abstraction, ie. verbal expression, as its consequence. The text in the title is translated into music as if through a filter and thus deleted. The more concrete the image becomes, the more it moves away from the essence of what it depicts.
The first two movements resemble a search for traces in a roundabout way. The annunciation, the illumination of a pre-existent, hidden truth, is expressed through music as symmetrical pairs of wings – two sides of the same figure, while the proportions, form and tonal serieses are structured in pairs and in a complementary way.
Embraces, the second part, develops (and at the same time wraps up) its melodies with the descending scales of the first movements. The third one develops out of the second, symbolising the hero’s fight against his own, unknown mirror image, the angel of his conscience: everything is identical and yet changes its appearance through the eyes resting on it, to the pont where it is no longer recognizable.
The title is taken from a poem by Johannes Poethen.
© Johannes Kalitzke (Translation: Andreas Goebel)
