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Melting Away: Gravity (2011)

for string orchestra, piano, percussion, voice, spatialized electronics and projection
8 minute

Arctic photography by Camille Seaman

Premiere Info: Premiered by the CSUF Symphony Orchestra in March, 2011.

Gravity by Rainier Maria Rilke (translation by Stephen Mitchell, permission granted)

Center, how from all beings
You pull yourself, even from those that fly
Winning yourself back, irresistible center.
He who stands: as a drink through thirst
Gravity plunges down through him.
But from the sleeper falls
(as though from a motionless cloud)
the abundant rain of the heavy

Gravity is from a collection of works entitled "Melting Away" which document the polar regions of our planet, their environments, life forms, history of human exploration and the communities that work and live there created in collaboration with Arctic photographer Camille Seaman. According to National Geographic award-winning Arctic photographer and TED Fellow, Camille Seaman: “ Nick Cave once sang, "All things move toward their end." Icebergs give the impression of doing just that, in their individual way much as humans do; they have been created of unique conditions and shaped by their environments to live a brief life in a manner solely their own. I seek a moment in their life in which they convey their unique personality, some connection to our own experience and a glimpse of their soul which endures. These images were made in both the Arctic regions of Svalbard, Greenland, and Antarctica.”My work as composer, echoes these sentiments in sound. Working collaboratively with Camille Seaman over the past 5 years, I have employed her images in my multi-media electroacoustic opera: Sedna for Zeitgeist ensemble, video projection images and electronics, as well as in my current work, Melting Away: Gravity.In this new work, I employ the images of Melting Away from Camille Seaman’s work The Last Iceberg, and the text from Rilke poem Gravity. Both image and text depict a moment of time at the edge of implosion, disintegration and the inevitability of and resignation to this destruction. Melting Away: Gravity depicts this transformative process that echoes that image and text of melting away, The last iceberg and gravity. Spatialized sounds were collected from the Arctic and Antarctica and provided by Camille Seaman’s journey’s to Arctic and Antarctica (ship sounds, Icebreaker sounds), from Toby Sinkerson’s Arctic sound files (ice sounds, water sounds) and from the seismic recordings of the breakup of one of the largest icebergs ever observed in Antarctica, by University of Washington oceanographer, Seelye Martin (ice berg breakup sounds). Sound files were not manipulated or altered in any way—they were allowed to provide a sonic background that interacts with the live performance of the notated work for string orchestra.

To inquire about renting the score/parts, email Pamela Madsen directly at pmadsen@fullerton.edu.

March, 2011 | CSUF Symphony Orchestra