Eternity's Sunrise, for soprano & baroque ensemble (1997) Patricia Rozario, soprano The Choir and Orchestra of the Academy of Ancient Music Paul Goodwin Time, for John Tavener, seems to be not the moving endpoint of a line continually being drawn, but the whole line itself, stretching forever in both directions. The composer's own deep religiosity fuels his constant experimentation with the concepts of time, space, eternity, and infinity, resulting in musical works that aren't journeys but states. As with fellow Russian Orthodox composer Arvo Pärt, Tavener's compositions are made of symmetries and patterns that combine to form hovering, three-dimensional sonic shapes. In essence, Tavener composes musical holograms. Or perhaps we should say that the hearing of his works is a hologram; the composition itself is just the film used to project it. And, to further indulge in a rather elaborate but nonetheless accurate metaphor, it is interesting to note that just as each fragment of a broken holographic film creates the whole original visual image, so do Tavener's scores create micro/macroscopic resonances, fractals that replicate themselves on various levels. Such is the case with his 1997 work for soprano soloist, handbells, and Baroque ensemble, Eternity's Sunrise. The work was created in memory of the composer's father as well as the late Princess of Wales, and, like Tavener's other "in memoriam" works (such as the one for Annon Lee Silver), Eternity's Sunrise emphasizes the eternal nature of the spirit rather than the passing of the mortal body. Tavener achieves this by taking two texts of William Blake, both of them on the subject of eternity, and converging them. The familiar couplet from "Eternity" is interpolated between lines from "Augeries of Innocence," with recurring Alleluias interspersed as well. This device alone has the effect of forcing the listener to rearrange chronology, to assemble the musical object rather than just watch the constituent parts pass by. Blake's texts themselves are rather holographic: a grain of sand contains an entire world and an hour holds eternity. The sonorities employed by the composer also defy chronological rigor. The agile, angular solo soprano line is at once vaguely liturgical and strikingly modern, and the handbells lend an air of timeless ritual. The clean, warm sonority of the Baroque instrumental ensemble sounds as new as it does old. Paul Goodwin, who conducted the Academy of Ancient Music in the premiere of the work on July 1, 1998, admitted as much: "However hard we in the early music movement try to achieve the sounds and techniques of the past, we can never escape the fact that ultimately, we see everything through twentieth-century eyes and, therefore, represent a twentieth-century movement." By combining so many chronological references and associations, Tavener's work seeks to transcend them all and find a space outside and above the ticking of the clock. Perpendicular to the axis stretching from the infinite past to the future, Tavener places another one, stretching from the terrestrial to the celestial. Not only does the composer identify these symbols in his notes; he also makes them explicit in performance. The singer, representing the earth, performs at floor level; the handbell performer, in his role as the angels, is raised above the soprano; the full instrumental ensemble takes its place in the heavens. The composer describes how this arrangement is tied intimately to Blake's evocative texts: "When we see things as they truly are, the earth is a mirror of the Eternal World, and, when seen correctly, it is possible in this world to live in Eternity's Sunrise. God does not exist in the world, and yet at the same time He is reflected in it, giving it form and structure." [allmusic.com] Art by Marc Chagall

• published: 26 May 2010
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