Ēriks Ešenvalds
Seneca's Zodiac
Ēriks Ešenvalds
Seneca's Zodiac
- Instrumentation Mixed Choir, Instrument and Piano
- Composer Ēriks Ešenvalds
- Lyricist Seneca
- Edition Choral Score
- Publisher Musica Baltica
- Order no. MBALTICA1386
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Description:
Seneca's Zodiac, by composer Ēriks Ešenvalds for mixed choir, was commissioned in 2011 by Philadelphia-based virtuosos The Crossing for their Seneca Sounds project and includes an array of non-vocal sound-sources — tuned glasses, Tibetan bowls, a rain stick, a bass drum, combs and paper and a prepared piano. Instruments and voices (who also whistle and audibly breathe) meld into one, creating a soundworld of compelling otherness. The result is at once primordial and modern, spiritual and scientific: the twelve constellations collapsing into the sea described by Seneca in his tragedy Thyestes are given a set of pitches based on the positions of their stars. These are traced in the score for the performers to see, but also traced by prepared piano for listeners to hear. After a hair-raising opening telling of the coming end of the world, the evocations of each constellation are richly characterised as a mysterious ritual that subsides into stillness and exhalation for the fall of the Fish, "last of the stars of heaven". — from notes by Gabriel Jackson © 2013