Donemus Webshop — Quintessence

Other authors:
Fitzgerald, Edward (librettist)
Omar Khayyam (librettist)
Contains:
Gaia
Agua
Aeola
Pyra
Stella
Description:
Program note (English): 'Giyát o'd-Din Abo'l-Fath Ómar ebn-e Ebráhim al-Hayyámi was a twelfth century Persian Sufist. His Rubaiyat (literally Quatrains) became well known after Edward Fitzgerald published his translation anonymously in 1859. He later added a number of quatrains and the text used in this piece is taken from his 1879 version. Khayyam's genial aphorisms mocking the pretension of authority, his comparison of the cosmic and the world and his witty contempt of Man's foolish attempts to achieve immortality lend the poems a freshness and currency. It seems that the world is not so different today as when the poems were written 850 years ago. Indeed, lines from this work are amongst the most oft quoted of all English language poetry. I was introduced to the Rubaiyat by my grandparents (to whom this piece is dedicated) in 1978 or so. I was struck by the irony of the opium-scented sensuality of the poem with its positive portrayal of the hedonism of the present being translated by a
High-Victorian poet whose repressed society pretended to reject momentary pleasure in favour of collecting credits for the life to come. The poems deal ultimately with the relations between quite different worlds: the Terrestrial and the Heavenly, the volition of the individual against the determinism of Nature's laws, the temporary and the permanent, human love and its Divine counterpart. There is a realization that, in a sense, each includes its opposite pole; in the same way that a mandala symbolizes the Eastern concept of the identity of opposites: within the black segment there is the seed of the white and vice versa. Quintessence comprises five movements, each of which concerns an essence or basic substance of the Mediaeval World. They are: Gaia (Earth) concerning terrestrial notions of time, Aqua (Water) about Man's morality and the impermanence of human projects, Aeola (Air) considering earthly love as a symbol of the Divine, Pyra (Fire) concerning the inevitability of fate and
the machinations of Nature and Stella (the stuff of Stars and Heaven) about death and the ultimate union with the Divine. The piece is constructed symmetrically about the central movement Aeola the centre of which is something of a distorting mirror. Thus the movements are paired I and V, II and IV. III is obviously free-standing and still centre of the whole piece occurs on the word "nothing" which is placed on a characteristic chord which recurs a number of times throughout. The mandala or hologram image inhabits the structure of this work. Each movement contains ghosts or seeds of the others to make a sort of high dimensional (infinite) circle. There are oblique references to both Eastern and Western paradigms. For example the five movement structure is suggestive of the Mass and the harmonic scheme of the piece derives from a Chorale heard at the end of III which functions as a sort of requiem-sequence. Indeed when the sequence recurs at the close of the work it is marked Chorale
Metempsychosis - the Transmigration of Souls - a feature of Bhuddist and Vedic thought. - Richard Sims

Sheet Music
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Product	Description	Price/piece	Count
Score	Download to Newzik (B4), 54 pages	EUR 27.67
	Download as PDF (B4), 54 pages	EUR 33.20
	Hardcopy, normal size (B4), 54 pages	EUR 55.34
	Hardcopy, study size (A4), 54 pages	EUR 45.32
Choirpart	Download to Newzik (B4), 51 pages	EUR 13.30
	Download as PDF (B4), 51 pages	EUR 15.96
	Hardcopy, normal size (B4), 51 pages	EUR 26.60