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Centre of the Universe
September 8, 2012
The influence on astronomy on music was, until the second half of the twentieth century, fairly slight. One can adduce a few earlier pieces - such as the aria "Total eclipse" from Handel's Samson or Haydn's opera Il Mondo della Luna, which actually features an amateur astronomer as its principal character - but it is not until Paul Hindemith's 1957 opera, Die Harmonie der Welt (The Harmony of the World), about the life and work of Johannes Kepler, that things really start to pick up. (And no, I haven't forgotten Holst's masterpiece The Planets, but that is based on mythology and astrology, not astronomy.)
Few composers, though, have actually derived their musical material from astronomical observations themselves: one notable exception was John Cage, whose Atlas Eclipticalis was composed by tracing positions from a star chart directly onto manuscript paper.
Another is Estonian composer Urmas Sisask, who is an astronomical enthusiast and who derived his "planetal" scale from a study of the trajectories of the planets. Quite why this should have led him to a pentatonic scale, when there are (or were in the 1980s) nine planets, escapes me - it somehow seems redolent of Kepler's use of the five Platonic solids in his Mysterium Cosmographicum.
However, it matters not what the original inspiration behind Sisask's scale was, rather what the results it engendered. Or, to put it another way, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Certainly, in the case of Gloria Patri, Sisask's 1988 hymn-cycle, the ends do seem to justify (perhaps "validate" would be a more appropriate, less jesuitical, word) the means.
Saturday's concert by Vox Humana under the direction of Brian Wismath, gave us fifteen of the twenty-four hymns in the cycle, a wise decision which prevented any sense of ennui.
From the start, this was an unusual concert: the choir entered, up the stairs, humming all the while; shortly thereafter, the dome began to revolve - an impressive, albeit noisy, sight; finally, the roof opened.
When all was as silent as it was ever going to get (the evening came complete with the occasional sound of car horns from the road far below and, on at least one occasion, what sounded like steam escaping somewhere in the depths of the building), Wismath launched his choir into what was, for most of us, The Unknown.
It would probably be fairly tedious to attempt a movement-by-movement analysis of the performance; the entire work was beautifully sung, with excellent intonation and balance: indeed, there were very few occasions when individual voices stood out - except, of course, for those passages specifically marked as solo. Given the "close up and personal" nature of the venue, with the choir ranged around approximately 120 degrees of the dome's circumference, the closest member being no more than a couple of metres from where I sat, this homogeneity of sound was all the more impressive; although the highly resonant acoustic played its part, the lion's share of the credit must go to the singers and their director.
Sisask's movement titles covered a good deal of ecclesiastical territory, with much of the Mass ("Kyrie", "Credo", "Sanctus", "Agnus Dei") covered, as well as texts familiar from settings by other composers ("Ave verum Corpus"). The music is clearly influenced by both Gregorian Chant and Sisask's teacher, Arvo Pärt - although Sisask's music tends to move considerably faster than Pärt's.
Wismath's direction of the work was truly excellent, with immaculate pacing and dynamics; I can think of no higher praise than to say that not once, during almost ninety minutes of totally unfamiliar music (using just the five notes of Sisask's "planetal scale") did I feel my attention wandering, despite several distractions, such as the light illuminating Wismath's score - and hands - failing during "Ave Regina caelorum". A potential disaster which he and his singers overcame with aplomb.
The eighth movement, "Pater noster" was sung superbly by the solo quartet of Kristen Birley, Amy Dawson, Robert Fraser and Geoff Espin, with Wismath directing with discreetly small gestures, and there were also fine solo contributions during the other movements from Anna Sophia Backhaus, Tegan Brown, Katherine O'Connor and Amy Konowalyk.
But the evening, of course, belonged to the entire choir and their conductor.
A truly memorable occasion.
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