Listening to a stunning recording of ancient choral music, I became re-interested in the rhythmic subtleties of voices executing the unspecified time flow of Gregorian chant. Using a variety of similar but slightly different note values, including the ancient semi-minim, minim, dotted-minim, breve, dotted-breve, and lunga), I composed a new plain chant. Beginning with pitches of a dorian mode, my wordless chant takes chromatic turns, providing tonal color without chords above a motionless deep drone. A high, windblown echo of the chant’s shape appears as prelude and coda to its “singing” deepness.
The title (“Earth Song”) is inspired by two great 20th-century works: Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (1909) and Stravinsky’s Canticum Sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci Nominis (1955). In this era facing global crises on our blue planet, Canticum Terra is a musical homage to and prayer for Mother Earth.
Five sound sketches on the historical paintings of Alfons Mucha (1996/2005)
I first traveled to the Moravian region of Czechoslovakia in 1991 to conduct my own music at the 26th International Music Festival in Brno. While there, I visited the South Moravian town of Moravský Krumlov. Its castle served as a museum gallery for the epic paintings, Slovanská Epopej, of Alfons Mucha. Better known as the father of art nouveau through his many famous Paris posters, Mucha was deeply interested in Slavic culture and history. The 20 paintings, each a monumental canvas hung as a tapestry, vividly depict both historical and mythical scenes.
Mucha’s Light: Ancient Images is dedicated to Miroslav Marada, the Moravian gentleman who first showed the paintings to the composer in 1991. A teacher, history buff, and lover of the local wines of south Moravia, Marada fascinated me with elaborate tales, explaining the symbolism of each painting. The five works I selected to sketch musically have a common element, masterfully painted images of exotic light. Composing musical analogs for these ancient images, I incorporated medieval music from the Bohemian/Moravian region of central Europe. The music weaves authentic medieval chant tunes into an intensely contrapuntal fabric, interspersed with modern sparks, streaks, and splashes of sound color. Originally composed for brass quintet, the musical images called for a richer, more varied sound-color palette:
Thomas Clark - composer / digital artist 