Christian Mason (*1984) Eternal Return
I “Your whole life, like a sandglass…” – II “…in which you are but a grain…” [orch] 2018 Duration: 9'
3(2picc).3.3(Eb-clar.db-clar).A-sax.3(dbl bsn) – 4.3.3.1.´ – timp.perc(4) – hp – cel– str
World premiere: Wiesbaden, Kurhaus, January 26, 2019
Commissioned by Breitkopf & Härtel for its 300th anniversary
“In Eternal Return, the music is composed of many short repeating melodic and scalar fragments built up in lots of layers moving at different speeds to create glittering global textures. But on a deeper, and maybe also more interesting, level there is the philosophical question of what time is and how we experience it, and beyond this the question of if (and how) we can transcend time or reach beyond it, even just for an undefinable instant. Of course when we compose we are, on a practical level, defining sonic activity within a certain time-frame, but on the other hand one of the special – maybe even unique – things about music is the way in which it can sometimes seem to take us outside time. That is what I mean, I think, by ‘eternity’: not ‘a very long time’ but rather a state of ‘non-time’ which can emerge from within the flow of time.”
(Christian Mason)