The Earth Speaks
And spring will barely remember us
Who would lose sleep if humanity became extinct?
Certainly not the birds and the trees.
Spring would hardly notice….
Earth Speaks is a breathtaking musical journey about the birth and demise of the earth. William Knight’s Genesis brings the earth to life, after which Brumel’s monumental Earthquake Mass depicts the capriciousness of humans and their impact on nature, and Vasks’ Plainscapes depicts an ideal world in harmony. Are we and the earth still salvageable? Knight’s Apocalypse gives pause for thought. In the end, it is Bach who applauds the first dawn and leads the way to the seemingly inevitable Apocalypse. Or do I hear a bird singing there after all?
The mass is also a perfect example of how a big disaster can happen on a small scale. Indeed, the ink used in the more than five hundred-year-old score is agonisingly slowly destroyed by bacteria. The Earthquake Mass is broken up by Pēteris Vasks’ magical Plainscapes. Here we hear a world where man and nature are one. A world where man does not dominate. Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden, so scheide nicht von mir… Apocalypse! Bach’s most beautiful chorale, his sacred house, sung as a litany for the world, slowly torn apart until there is only chaos. This is Apocalypse, a composition by William Knight, ultimately ending in a flatline…
Or do I hear the birds singing there again after all?
William Knight about his work:
Sand and Foam uses words from Kahlil Gibran’s book of the same name. The book is made up of hundreds of aphorisms, each beautiful and thought-provoking. My task was to create a piece of two halves around the themes of Genesis and Apocalypse, specifically related to the birth and fall of mankind. It is worth noting here that in the first performance, the end of the first part was followed by Bach’s chorale “Wie Schön leuchtet der Morgenstern”, and the second part started with “Wenn ich einmal soll scheiden”.
For the first half (Genesis), I chose aphorisms that centred around birth, nurture, and warning. The piece starts with an aphorism on birth and the promise of night and the sea. Here, the main musical theme comes in, played by the string instruments, and represents water, life and progression. This theme meanders between the aphorisms, ever-changing harmony and purpose. The last aphorism is in text very close to the story of Genesis, but it ends with the prophecy of our apocalypse. This is not in a calamitous way, rather, what is to come will come.
The second half (Apocalypse) uses aphorisms centred around emptiness, life, and death (presented also as a warning). A broken musical theme begins in a conversation between the violin and cello, and a single voice comments on how humankind cuts down the earth’s trees for paper to record our emptiness. The main theme from the first half is absent, and it takes a little time before it returns renewed. Life always finds a way. At one point near the end, a singer calls out to life, asking to hear Death itself speak. The living are requesting to see a glimpse of the end. At this point, life raises her voice, and says: “You hear him now.” Life and death present the beginning and the end, but not apart from each other. This brings the piece to a close, where the water and sea slowly erase our footsteps, and life carries on.
Composers in the crosshairs of our attention