Sacred Music Waves (December 2019)

On September 22 2013, my composition Jehanne for soprano and viola was performed at the Orchestra Hall of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory, Singapore, by Akiko Otao (soprano) and Kailin Yong (viola). This is the live recording of that performance. The Art Song concert in which included this performance of Jehanne formed part of the 2013 Asian Composers’ League (ACL) Festival and Conference. My travel to the ACL was funded by the Faculty of Music, Universiti Teknologi MARA.

Programme Notes

Jehanne was commissioned by Elisabetta Faenza and has been performed in Australia (2008) and the United States (2007). The text for Jehanne is an excerpt from the final section of Elisabetta Faenza’s libretto for the very successful rock opera, Jehanne D’Arc (Joan of Arc), by Linda Oxley,  and is intended to be a verbal expression of the state of spiritual illumination Jehanne experienced, just prior to being burned at the stake:

But that was not enough,
What I needed, what I lacked,
Was a vision for life,
For my own life,
Beyond the ramparts and the battle field. 

For was this not my script,
The fulfilment of my own prophecy?
And were not these fellows,
But players in the story I had woven for myself? 


Let not this archetype play on,
Of women, noble, gifted and strong,
Who martyr themselves for God, family or country.

Let a new story be told,
For I am tired of this plot,
Some five hundred years on. 

Women raise your heads,
Dry your eyes,
And find yourselves a vision for living,
That radiates life. 

The musical setting for this text was inspired by my interpretations of the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish and Islamic musical traditions. The climactic phases of the composition comprise passages that recall the polyphonic sacred works of composers such as Gesualdo and Palestrina. Furthermore, variations of my “resurrection theme”—a melodic theme intended as a symbolic reference to the concept of “resurrection”, encountered in several of my works—are articulated at a number of dramatic points of Jehanne. These are intended as musical portrayals of the rebirth and renewal of the female archetype Jehanne yearned for.

Jehanne for soprano and viola by Katia Tiutiunnik (Text by Elisabetta Faenza)

Text from Song of Songs 3:1-4
Commissioned and performed by the Adelaide Chamber Singers, directed by Carl Crossin, 2011

in lectulo meo per noctes (On my bed by night)
quaesivi quem diligit anima mea (I sought him whom my soul loves)
quaesivi illum et non inveni (I sought him, but found him not)

surgam et circuibo civitatem (I will rise now and go about the city)
per vicos et plateas (in the streets and in the squares)
quaeram quem diligit anima mea (I will seek him whom my soul loves)
quaesivi illum et non inveni (I sought him, but found him not)

invenerunt me vigiles (The watchmen found me)
qui custodiunt civitatem (as they went about in the city)
num quem dilexit anima mea vidistis (“Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”)

paululum cum pertransissem eos (Scarcely had I passed them)
inveni quem diligit anima mea (when I found him whom my soul loves)
tenui eum nec dimittam (I held him, and would not let him go)
donec introducam illum in domum matris meae (until I had brought him into my mother's house)
et in cubiculum genetricis meae (and into the chamber of her who conceived me)

in lectulo meo per noctes

This is a piece I wrote in 2014 about the beauty and potential destruction of the Great Barrier Reef. 

Amazing Adelaide musicians playing in this recording are as follows... Violin 1: Hilary Bruer, Violin 2: Danielle Jaquillard, Viola: Natalie Maegraith, Piano: Robin Parkin, with myself playing cello. I hope you enjoy listening :) 

Lament For The Reef

Pilgrim Psalms #1
Setting of Psalm 130
Performed by the Adelaide Chamber Singers, 2009

Out Of The Depths

for SATB(divisi) Chorus with Soprano Solo
Commisioned by Mary and Paul Pollard for Musica Viva Australia and dedicated to Christopher.
For Stephen Layton and The Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2015-16.

Hymn Of Ancient Lands, Choir of Trinity College Cambridge

Echo
For every church I have called home

Alone in a church:
the echo of tradition.
The reverberation
of tears and hope,
forged and shed and consolidated
among friends,
among family.
Congregations elongated
by the leaking of time.

Purity of focus,
clarity of sound:
I breathe
and many others breathe with me.
I cloud the empty space,
the whole, full, rich space.
Add a new colour,
a new echo.

These walls –
they know things.
Confidential things.
Joyous things,
crying things,
empowering things;
screaming for justice things.
And they throw sound back at me.

The echo is only me
at first, but it grows,
and moments refract from jagged
directions.
Shards collide, collude –
meld, mould into something
indistinguishable but beautiful.

A disturbance
in the peace that is a church –
in the lie that is peace
in a church.
Both it and I, and my instrument,
bear scars.
Because we are only human:
it and I, and my instrument.
We echo,
but we are only human.

_____________________________________________
Composed and performed by Gabi Cadenhead
Poetry by Gabrielle Cadenhead
Recorded and mixed by Liam Mulligan
Premiered on Friday 11th May, 2018 at St Stephen's Uniting Church, as part of Konzertprojekt presents: Fluteprojekt
Performed at City Recital Hall's Extended Play New Music Festival in August 2018

Access the score here: https://goo.gl/forms/utFRlJAkzVenoStq2

Echo - Gabi Cadenhead

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Sacred Music Waves (December 2019)

Making Waves New Music