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Description:
Once again, I was in a quandary as to where to post this piece. It is properly either a ballet or a soundtrack to some future religious epic by Mel Gibson (and if anyone knows Mel Gibson, please forward this to him as I'm certain he'd find it interesting), but the the Cinematic Soundtrack and Film Scoring sections here are junked-up with bland little pieces that tell no story whatsoever. This music attempts to depict an arcane religious topic, so that's where I'll post it -- under Religious, and it's certainly contemporary in style.
CATHARTIC MUSIC
Since the development of monotheism, a salient problem with that system of belief has been widely discussed: namely, if God is all-knowing and all powerful, yet beneficent and kindly, why is there so much suffering in the world? Grief, pain, hunger, sobriety, disease, depression, parasites, and the very natural disasters we term "Acts of God" -- how can it be that a loving, perfect Creator has dealt us such woes?
Over the years, theologians have speculated that we should ignore our suffering, because since God actually is all-loving and kind, this must be the best of all possible worlds. If a more comfortable world could exist, our perfect Creator would certainly have created it. This philosophy is called Optimism, and Voltaire handily disposed of it in his short novel, Candide. A more rational explanation, yet one still within the scope of religion, dates back far before Voltaire, and that is polytheism.
The earliest Christians were influenced by many other systems of belief than the Old Testament of the Jews, and indeed, few Jews came to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the long-overdue Messiah who would drive the Romans out and give His chosen their due glory. Long before the Nicene Creed attempted to standardize Christian thought, many Christian sects remained influenced by the beliefs of the Greeks -- indeed, the Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles were all written in Greek. Beliefs borrowed from Mithraism, which was popular among the Romans, and Platonism combined with the cult of Jesus to form Gnostic Christianity, which held that the Supreme Being (the concept of the Trinity had yet to be devised) was not the creator of the universe. The material world was instead created by a lesser god, the Demiurge, whose mother was Sophia. The Demiurge, while not Satanic, had a personality disorder (or, he may have been bipolar), and the universe he created was thus dreadfully flawed. We poor mortals suffer as a result of his incompetence and mischief.
Various forms of Gnosticism thrived until the Christian church became organized and eventually powerful. By its very nature, Gnosticism does not lend itself well to any hierarchical organization. The Gnostics are pessimists who view this Earth as a corruption and a calamity caused by the Demiurge, and they expect to be freed from this mistake, not by following the orders of the puritanical bosses of any church, but by mysticism. A mystical experience is almost by definition not of this world, thus the only way to escape this tribulation of physical existence is through pure mystical experience. As opposed to the increasing puritanism of the organized church, some Gnostics embraced any means to a mystical experience -- drugs, sex, dancing.
Needless to say, this threat to established order met with severe repression. It was, however, not eliminated. It spread to the East where it was practiced as Manichaeism until about the 13th century, and it spread into isolated areas of Europe, where it held on for centuries. One such area was the south of France where it took the form of Catharism. The Cathar communities, despite their unorthodox tenets and concupiscent behavior, existed for many years like hippie communes in the Catholic nation, and little was done against them as long as they paid their taxes and sent tributes to Rome. But in 1209, when disagreement arose over fiscal issues, the Pope hired an army of 20,000 to stamp out the heresy. This was known as the Albigensian Crusade, and when its leader, Arnald-Amaury, was asked how to distinguish between the Catholics and Cathars in the territory, he is said to have replied, "Kill them all. God will recognize His own."
Catharism, with its belief in the dualism of the Demiurge and Sophia the heavenly mother of knowledge, then moved underground and was not completely eliminated until the Inquisition. Or was it? Alert readers will recall that the area where Catharism flourished is the very region to which Mary Magdalene is said to have moved to raise the children she had with Jesus -- a topic which was recently revived in the best seller of recent times, The Da Vinci Code. Further than that, I dare not divulge.
The sections of my piece are as follows;
1. Dance of the Seven Archons
2. In His Majesty, Yahweh passes with His Entourage
3. Even at Birth, the Demiurge proves Willful and has the Sin of Pride
4. After Giving Birth, Sophia is Ashamed and Wraps the Demiurge in a Cloud with a Throne in it
5. The Cherubim Gird their Weapons and Prepare for Battle
6. The Force of Syzygy Wins the Battle, Allowing for the Creation of the Universe
7. The Demiurge Joins the Dance of Triumph, Exulting over His Creation
As usual, the sheet music for this tune can be seen and played at my SibeliusMusic page, where you can watch the notes go by as the music plays. I had wanted to write this piece for symphony orchestra, but my orchestral pieces just aren't selling (zero sales), so I instead wrote it for wind ensemble.
No QuickTime, GarbageBand or other Apple sounds were used.
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Amazing &mdash 11/25/06 - 11:10:43 AM
Not a reworking of other's ideas.. a completely new voice.
The difference between talent and genius:
Talent hits a target no one else can hit..
Genius hits a target no one else can see..
THIS is genius. [ Reply to This ]
that was deep! &mdash 12/13/06 - 01:58:40 AM
my wife recently took a history class that dealt whith a lot of what you wrote about, including the Cathars, and read the book The Labyrynth by Kate Moss. Having said that, I really enjoyed this piece. A lot of work went into this piece. What did you use and how did you do it? This is a great piece! [ Reply to This ]
Brilliant &mdash 12/22/06 - 04:46:20 AM
Finally getting around to catching up on my favorite people here, I've come to this masterpiece, far ahead of anything else thus far. It's unique, although stylistically you definitely have your own voice, this reminding me of your style in some past works.
Now, if I may ask, you clearly have one of the strongest true backgrounds in music of anyone here--would you care to share a little bit about how you got that way? Clearly you have creativity and talent, but you also have apparently had some sort of music education, and I'm curious what that entailed.
Anyway, great work. :)
[ Reply to This ]
FREE GIFT ! &mdash 01/02/07 - 07:27:48 PM
Thank you, Enrique and Andronis for your kind words which were all the more welcome, as I'd given up that anyone would ever listen to the piece – or else everyone hated it.
In answer to your questions:
1.) Sophia Begets the Demiurge was written using Sibelius 3 (I'm too parsimonious to upgrade). Then, as I have noticed that my files are somewhat quiet as compared with everyone else's, I imported it into GarageBand for compression to raise the average volume. (Compression also lowers the clarity of sound, but whaddya gonna do?)
2.) Due to poor grades and the low opinion of my teachers, I was denied entrance into the local universities. (Elsewhere on the 'net is my anecdote about how the late John Weinzweig, noted serialist and experimental composer at the University of Toronto, looked through one of my youthful scores and pronounced with a sneer, "I see no evidence of any talent here.") Also at that time, you may recall, the drug culture had taken over M-m-y G-g-g-generation, and I spent most of my youth in the pursuit of various narcotics. The autobiographical description on my page is accurate. I worked at the Gilbert Garage, 5600 Wabash, Detroit, Michigan, for many years, and I started out by changing tires and cleaning vomit from municipal coaches. (I was promoted when it was discovered that I was the only one who could read a schematic.)
I thus have very little formal training, but not zero training, because our music teachers Cass Technical High School in Detroit taught a lot of theory. The choir director (Mr. Taranta) tested us by having each member of the class go to the piano and play "My Country T'is of Thee"/"God Save the King" in whatever key he announced. I was the class clown, so he didn't like me, and he called for me to play it in the key of F#. French horn was my major instrument then, and I was thus used to transposing, so that was easy.
I wish I had earned a college degree, but only as it would have enabled me a higher income. I do not regret missing theory and composition classes, because I am of the opinion that such instruction is worthless. To prove this point, I ask you
What university did J. S. Bach attend?
What music conservatory did Mozart graduate from?
Who did Beethoven study with? (The answer to that is Haydn, but Beethoven said that he never learned anything from Haydn.)
Where did Wagner receive music instruction?
Where did Brahms study? (Answer: Brahms learned to make music by playing piano in a whorehouse in Hamburg.)
From what school of music did William Walton or Paul Creston or George Gershwin or James P. Johnson or Fats Waller or Fletcher Henderson graduate?
And what of my heroes, the great American circus composers like W. P. English, Karl L. King, Russell Alexander, Charlie Duble? At what royal academy of music did they matriculate?
The answer is that there seems to be an inverse correlation between how much formal training a composer has received and the merit of the music he subsequently creates. The reason for this is that music teachers, by and large, are pompous frauds and devoid of any gift. If they had a genuine love of music, they'd be out making it, not writing unreadable textbooks. I occasionally attend one of the local symphonies and get to hear a World Premiere of a dynamic new masterwork by some Professor Flotsam or Dr. Schnorrer from one of the universities, and without exception, their pieces turn out to be the usual atonal clichés and transparent buncombe. The piece will be performed once, then mercifully forgotten for eternity, because ain't none of them guys could compose a danceable jig if his life depended on it. What classical music needs to do is to get out of the university and back into the whorehouse.
I leaned the nuts and bolts of music composition the same way J. S. Bach did: by copying music out in Sibelius notation software. (Though I assume Bach used an earlier version.) I learned more from copying Walt English's march "The Volitant" than I did from all my music teachers combined. (This was because there was no score and I had to work from the individual octavo-sized parts which were riddled with major errors -- it was a crash course in analyzing chord progressions.)
There is, I must admit, one advantage to attending a music school, and that is that one can meet a lot of friends and associates there. The problem I face is that I'm having trouble finding ensembles who will play my music. I know a lot of mechanics, but I am unknown among band directors, so my music doesn't get played. And that, dear friends, is where YOU come in! If you know a band director (the one at the school you or your kids attend, for example), mention that sheet music for my tuneful pieces can be downloaded for a token fee from
http://members.sibeliusmusic.com/invictus
AND here's a special offer! If they mention that they heard it from Enrique or Andronis, I'll throw in a second piece of music for absolutely free! What are you waiting for? Operators are standing by ready to take your call. Please have your credit card ready. (Offer prohibited where void.) [ Reply to This ]
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The difference between talent and genius:
Talent hits a target no one else can hit..
Genius hits a target no one else can see..
THIS is genius.
[ Reply to This ]