Product Description
Canticum
Canticorum, for Grand String Orchestra & Mixed Choir, is a musical piece based on the old
text with the same name from Vulgate. The Canticum
Canticorum text also known as Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon, the Canticle of
Canticles, (Old Greek: Άσμα
Ασμάτων, same meaning as "song of songs").
As David Berlo once beautifully put this into
words: "Meanings are in people not in the
messages . The elements and structure of a language are only symbols .
Meanings are not transmittable Only messages are transmittable, and meanings
are not in the message, they are in the message-users!"
Therefore, I needed to
understand and interpret the text itself, even before I wanted to try setting it
to the music. However, in order to understand the text correctly, one should
comprehend the origin of the text and get to know its author(s), at first.
In the case
of Canticum Canticorum, both the author and the origin of
the text are obscure. Furthermore, even the approximate date/century/era of the
birth and the cultural context in which the text was created, are far from
clear. According to the scholars, the creation of the text ranges from the
tenth century B.C.; the
era of Solomon, up to the first century B.C., and the origin of it considers from Indian, Tamil, or
Ethiopic literature to Palestinian one. Because of these vast spectra of dates
and cultures, I had to read and understand the text, compare with other
sources, find similarities in other languages and cultures, hermeneutically
interpret it and search for those non-written or metaphorical clues that may
lead to unfasten the mystery has been attached to the text.
In order to achieve the most accurate
and faithful interpretation of the text I also had to answer few questions
regarding the style, structure, medium, architecture and techniques of the
music in relation to the text. I have used string orchestra and mixed choir to
render the ideas, since that is among highly versatile instrumentations capable
of providing small and delicate whispers, heavenly voices, and intonation
changes that is hardly-reproducible by other mediums as well as thunderous sounds.
Although Canticum
Canticorum is
single-movement work, but still possible to distinguish three different
sections: the beginning choral part that is a long fugue in 5 voices with the
material of serial music which helps orchestra to enter and grow, the a-capella middle section consists of two contrasting
but invisibly related atmospheres and the third section the recapitulation of
the ideas already presented, in both the text and the music. The culmination of
the work; 11-parts choral, takes place in the third section, somewhere near the
end of the piece.
Canticum Canticorum, for Grand String Orchestra & Mixed Choir, is dedicated to the genius composer of our time,
Maestro Prof. dr. h.c.
Krzysztof Penderecki.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.