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Texts

Apokálypsis,  The Sixth Seal,  The Two Witnesses,  Two Scenes from Revelation,  Four Movements from Revelation,  The Woman and the Dragon,  Three Scenes from Le Petit Prince,  Rapsodie sur un Thème d'Olivier Messiaen

Apokálypsis – an Oratorio on the Book of Revelation in the Original Koine

Koine (which means ‘common dialect’) is the Greek that was spoken from ca. 300 B.C. to the 6^th Century A.D. It is one of the transitional stages between Classical Attic Greek (the Greek of Homer for instance) and Modern Greek. The book of Revelation of John and all the other books of the New Testament save for one were written in Koine. (The only exception is the Gospel according to Matthew, which was originally written in Aramaic – Jesus’ native language – but the original was lost and the earliest surviving copy is a Koine translation.) I chose this language because of its beauty and because translations never completely faithfully reproduce an original text. Apokálypsis means ‘revelation’ in Koine.

The oratorio’s musical material is built following a very simple premise: every single melodic, harmonic and rhythmic idea that is used in the entire piece comes from its first seven measures – the theme of God. It is a veritable tour de force to base a piece of an hour and fifteen minutes or so on only seven bars of music, but it is a challenge that I gladly undertook for I believe it is in the music’s best interest. The reasons are that it makes such a large-scale work as cohesive as possible and also that it symbolises the omnipresence and omnipotence of God in a very concrete way. This theme is full of symbolism in itself: it is built of twelve perfect triads (symbolising the perfection of God and the Holy Trinity – triads: three-note chords) that create three twelve-tone rows horizontally and three twelve-tone rows vertically (symbolising the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve prophets of the Old Testament and the twelve apostles of Jesus). The idea of a twelve-tone row is also significant: it uses all the possible notes within an octave (e.g. the white and black keys of the piano) and thus symbolises that God is in everything and everywhere. The number of beats that are comprised in the theme are equal to 7+7+7=21; and many of the scales that are derived from the theme have seven notes. Thus the most important biblical numbers – 3, 7 and 12 – permeate the theme and lend themselves admirably to being used in music.

The oratorio's completion is scheduled for the beginning of 2005.

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The first piece that I wrote on the Revelation subject – and incidentally my first piece for orchestra – is about the opening of the seals that precedes the famous seven trumpets of the Apocalypse. Even though I called it "The Sixth Seal," it actually also contains musical material for the fifth seal, the seventh trumpet and other parts of the book as well. In fact, it is a study on the main themes from the oratorio, and for that reason I gave it the subtitle of "Study for Orchestra." The piece begins with the top line of my theme of God in the strings; the winds follow them and add a different dimension to the basic string colour. After a bell strikes three times, we hear a musical depiction of a great star falling to earth – all the instruments glissando wildly downward and come crashing down in the lowest register of the orchestra. After the music settles, an important theme of the oratorio makes its entrance: the theme of the fifth and sixth seals, which is first heard on the bassoon with a gentle accompaniment on two flutes and a clarinet. This theme is developed through modulation and the addition of more and more instruments, until it culminates in a thunderous fortissimo in the entire orchestra with the melody in the violins and trumpet. After three loud strokes of a tam-tam, the theme of God is heard in the brass in a slightly different version than in subsequent pieces. The piece concludes with an orchestral crescendo that ends with five strokes of a bass drum.

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The first time I used Koine was in The Two Witnesses, from Revelation’s chapter 11. The work starts with an extended introduction, which exclusively uses a special symmetrical scale that is derived from my theme of God. Like The Woman and the Dragon, I used polychords in the opening bars. They usher in a large complex contrapuntal section based on the said scale. The introduction reaches a climax when two transpositions of the scale are combined to create a very dissonant structure, and lead to a tutti on the previously heard polychords. Out of the apparent chaos of these powerful harmonies comes the voice of the bass-baritone, sustaining a single tone. The identity of who is speaking is curiously never specified in the Bible. John simply writes "I was told," which does not give us much of a clue as to who is speaking, but we may infer that is either God or Christ. This voice then, tells John to protect the temple of God because the holy city – Jerusalem – will be destroyed: the music is fairly dissonant with the voice singing disjunctly. The passion of two witnesses, or prophets, is revealed to John: their life and death, and their tribulation. At first the music becomes more consonant, using variations on the theme of God, for these prophets are holy, and little by little more dissonances creep into the texture to indicate their suffering and their power to overcome those who harm them. After a large crescendo that ends in a big dissonant harmony in the orchestra, only bass drum and timpani remain playing rhythmically and tumultuously.

The music grows ever darker, and in the deep low range of the bass-baritone, we hear of the beast from the bottomless pit that will fight and kill them. The thunderous beast’s theme is heard in the orchestra – six dissonant six-note chords punctuated by six blows on the bass drum repeated three times – which is followed by a lively yet sombre depiction of the rejoicing of those who were against the two witnesses. But after three and a half days, they come back to life and rise to heaven. At that point a tremendous earthquake kills seven thousand people. The instruments ascend and gradually become more cacophonous, until they simulate the sound of an earthquake by playing random notes as loud as possible. The music culminates in a fortissimo polychordal theme of God, only to quiet down with extremely gentle tones on three woodwinds accompanying a soft trumpet melody. This trumpet line blends into a flute solo, which in turn blends into a solo violin that rises to the highest notes of its range. The piece concludes with an Amen repeated three times.

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Chapter 20 describes the final battle between good and evil, which is in three parts: The Battle of Armageddon, The Messianic Kingdom, and The Final Defeat of Satan. My piece refers to the latter two sections.

First we hear Heaven opening – huge upward and downward glissandos in the entire orchestra that end in vast chords, like the vast expanse of Heaven – the music then quiets down to an extremely slow and tranquil F# Lydian in the strings. This is the messianic kingdom, where the righteous come to life and rule with Christ for a thousand years. A serene chorale in the winds slowly emerges, interspersed with otherworldly sounds created by bowed cymbals and randomly produced woodwind overtones. The chorale grows ever stronger until it cadences on an immense F# major-C major chord progression. The music abruptly changes to dark and menacing tones, with a 31-voice twelve-tone canon on top of a piano/percussion ostinato on a 7/8 rhythm: the thousand years being ended, Satan deceives the nations in order to gather them for battle one last time. Then we hear a disjunct orchestration of the Devil’s theme, followed by foreboding loud drums in the same incessant 7/8 rhythm that begin the battle music, and that are combined with a special scale that is derived from the chords of the previously mentioned theme. This idea is developed in a number of contrapuntal techniques, until finally Satan is defeated: the theme of God blaring in a massive tutti with trilling bass drum, timpani and cymbals. The Devil’s theme reduced to one obstinate chord appears one last time, in his desperate final attempt to cling to life, only to die down in the end with ever slower percussive blows.

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These are the first four movements from my oratorio, which have been recorded here in a reduced version for seven vocalists, organ and piano.

    Introduction "I Am the Alpha and the Omega": The work opens with the theme of God in its purest form and in the lowest tones of the piano. The Lord God symbolically proclaims his universality, omnipresence and omnipotence. Three singers are used to represent the Trinity: the Father – a bass; the Son – a tenor; and the Holy Ghost – a soprano. They sing from a low D in the bass (one of the lowest notes for a man) to a high D in the soprano (one of the highest notes for a woman).

    I- The Risen Christ Appears: Christ (tenor) tells John to write the revelation he is about to see. His voice is both like a trumpet and like the sound of many waters, and his face like the sun shining with full force. The music is somewhat frightening, representing the shock that John feels when he sees Him, but becomes extremely peaceful and soothing when Christ tells him not to fear. This is the longest section of the aria, in which the organ sustains gentle harmonies while the piano impressionistically sweeps across the entire compass of the instrument.

    II- The Heavenly Throne Room: A door in Heaven is opened and John sees God, His throne and all the heavenly creatures around Him: mysterious chords followed by the theme of God in three different transpositions portraying the Trinity. Four living creatures praise the holiness of God, and twenty-four elders sing of His worth (male chorus). One of the most important themes of the oratorio makes its appearance here, the praising of the Lord theme, which is treated in a three-voice canon with an intoning fourth voice.

    III- The Scroll with the Seven Seals: An angel (soprano) asks who is worthy to open the scroll with the seven seals. No one seems to be found and John weeps: the organ plays the same line as the trumpet solo from The Woman and the Dragon. An elder (bass) tells him to rejoice for the Lamb will open it. Three songs of thanksgiving are sung: first by the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders (male chorus), then by angels (women’s chorus) and finally by every creature in Heaven and on Earth (full chorus). The latter uses the praising of the Lord theme and ends in a seven-part Amen.

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My latest piece for orchestra, "The Woman and the Dragon," is based on chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation. It begins with a woman in heaven who is clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. Swelling polychords, gentle arpeggios in the flutes and oboes, trills in the celesta and glissandos in the strings and harp represent her cosmic nature. She is pregnant and crying out in birth pangs, which the trumpet evokes with a plaintive solo. These ideas are developed with a contrapuntal treatment of the theme from the fifth and sixth seals. As she is giving birth, her pain intensifies, and after a last swell of the aforementioned polychords, only high harmonics on the second violins and the violas remain, accompanied by delicate bowed crotales and eerie harmonic glissandos on the first violins and cellos: she has given birth to a male child who is to rule all the nations.

However, as soon as the child is born, the great red Dragon – Satan – tries to devour him. His entrance is announced by ominous low brass and winds that slowly creep into the ethereal music of the child, ultimately overpowering it with the Devil’s theme in a massive fortissimo. An intense and highly rhythmic pursuit ensues: the Dragon tries to devour the child, the child is taken to God’s throne, the woman flees to the wilderness and the archangel Michael comes to battle the Dragon. Both the holy and evil themes battle each other until the orchestra reaches a climax with a modified theme of God, and with all the instruments making fast downward scales, the Dragon is thrown down to Earth. A voice in Heaven – portrayed by string glissandos, and later by a wind and string chorale, both accompanied by a persistent line in the lowest instruments of the orchestra – proclaims: "Woe to the earth and the sea, for the Devil has come down to you with great wrath!" On the earth, the Dragon relentlessly pursues the woman – reprise of the pursuit music, fiercer and more intense – but the woman is given the two wings of the great eagle so that she can fly into the wilderness. At this point the music seems to reach its final climax with a majestic tutti that displays a brass chorale, rapid scales in the strings, an inversion of the trumpet solo from the beginning in the winds and trumpets, and shimmering bell-like percussion (glockenspiel and crotales). The Dragon, however, does not accept his defeat and pours from his mouth a river to sweep the woman away. The music becomes chaotic, symbolising the flood, makes a crescendo into a repeated dissonant brass chord, only to suddenly dwindle down to a single piccolo in its lowest note: the earth rescues the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river. To the sound of gongs and deep pedal tones in the trombones and tuba, the Dragon then takes his stand on the sand of the seashore…

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Antoine de St.-Exupéry’s masterpiece Le Petit Prince – "The Little Prince" – is such a beautiful and profound story that I always thought it would make a most delightful opera. I wrote these three scenes hoping one day to complete it. To best emulate the voice of a little boy I chose a soprano to sing the title role. The version on this recording is a piano-vocal reduction.

The first of these scenes tells of his arrival on Earth. (The Little Prince, by the way, comes from a very tiny planet called asteroid B 612.) He sees no one but an echo that repeats exactly what he says – a women’s chorus imitates everything the solo soprano sings. He then meets in the second scene a snake (tenor) in the Sahara desert that speaks in a cryptic manner. His enigmatic music is related to the region from which he comes from. In the third scene he sees a garden full of roses – a women’s chorus mostly singing on ‘Ah,’ since flowers don’t talk very much. This makes him very sad for his rose back in his little planet had told him that she was the only one in the whole Universe. He sings a very sad aria, and sinks down to cry…

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The theme that I chose for this piece is from the first few notes of the third movement of Messiaen’s masterpiece Quatuor pour la Fin du temps. This motif, (E) G-sharp G-natural A-sharp E, is used to construct the entire composition, as is the mode in which Messiaen’s work is mostly written in: the octatonic scale. In fact, this motif and this scale permeate most of his music throughout his entire compositional output. This rhapsody is therefore a tribute to the late French master, and is dedicated to my former guitar teacher Oren Fader, who kindly commissioned it from me.

The introduction states the theme interspersed with harmonics. The music then quickly changes to some furious outbursts that are reminiscent of flamenco, and drives the tempo forward while the theme is developed in a variety of ways. The calm middle section consists solely of tremolo technique. About halfway through it, another Messiaen quote is used: it comes from La Vierge et l’Enfant, the first movement of the organ work titled La Nativité du Seigneur. In a very real way it is the same theme, for the only difference with the first one is that it is harmonised. The fast closing section of the piece varies some previously heard music only to end with some devilishly fast finger work.

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– Pedro Henriques da Silva, 2003

Last updated on Tuesday, 21 June 2005   

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