Borges Music – Gheorghi Arnaoudov

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Gheorghi Arnaoudov (b. 1957)

Introduction
Gheorghi Arnaoudov is a Bulgarian minimalist who writes unabashedly spiritual music designed to create “mystical spaces.” While secular music aspiring to religiosity is too-often riddled with clichés, from “new age” music to “inspirational” film scores—even John Tavener occasionally indulges in sentimentality—the restlessly searching music of Gheorghi Arnaoudov avoids these pitfalls unerringly. Embracing dissonance and finding beauty in the strange, his music remains rooted in the avant-garde, but its elegance and poignancy feel entirely relevant and accessible. Difficult to categorize and impossible to predict, the music of Gheorghi Arnaoudov truly warrants the much-abused description of “unique.”

Biography
Gheorghi Arnaoudov was born in Bulgaria to a family with a strong musical background. He attended the Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music in Sofia, and studied composition in Florence under Brian Ferneyhough, where he explored electronic and musique concrète. Upon graduation and completion of his studies abroad, Arnaoudov began establishing a reputation as a musical theorist. Specializing in “modern and postmodern aesthetics, communication and semiotics,” Arnaoudov also studied ancient and Far Eastern musical forms.

Often compared to composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Arvo Pärt, Gheorghi Arnaoudov is known for creating “a music of stasis, a kind of intense minimalism that tells no conventional stories but rather meditates on an idea.” Mysticism and ritual are important features of his work, and Arnaoudov’s music frequently calls for musicians to use their instruments in non-traditional ways to produce overtones and resonances. He also draws inspiration from other artistic fields, particularly the art of Rene Magritte, the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky, and the writing of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges.

Arnaoudov has won several international prizes, including the Grand Prix of the European Broadcasting Union, the Golden Harp Prize, and the Carl Maria von Weber International Prize of Music. In 2017 he was awarded Bulgaria’s “Golden Age Star” award “for his contribution to the development and the flowering of the Bulgarian culture and national identity.” In 2009, Gheorghi Arnaoudov was appointed associate professor in Composition and Harmony and at the New Bulgarian University.

Borges-Related Works

Ritual III, “Borges Fragment” (1992)
A work featured on the 1998 disc Compositions, this is a meditation for solo cello.

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Ritual III, “Borges Fragment”
On Compositions

Compositions
Gega, 1998.

Track Listing
1. The Circle of Rites. For soprano and chamber ensemble (1991-93; 19:26)
2. Ritual I. For solo piano (1988; 7:27)
3. Ritual II, “Incarnation dans la lumière.” For solo piano (1992: 8:50)
4. Ritual III, “Borges Fragment.” For solo cello (1992; 5:26)
4. Kyrie (Summe Deus). For soprano and chamber ensemble (1993; 20:12)

Musicians
Musica Nova, Ensemble
Emilia Maximova, Soprano
Christo Pavlov, Flute
Boyan Vodenicharov, Piano
Kalina Krusteva, Cello

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Review

Ritual III, “Borges Fragment”

Written for the Bulgarian cellist Kalina Krusteva, Ritual III is the third piece in Arnaoudov’s “Ritual” series, solo works designed to create mystical spaces through the gradual accumulation of sounds. Lasting only five and a half minutes, Ritual III moves from apprehension to tranquility by resolving oppositions, but maintains a general sense of unease that suggests an underlying impermanence. The cello enters gently, undulating like the waves of a dark ocean, its limits marked by a soft plucking of strings. A cycle of melodic explorations begins, anxious excursions in a higher register that become increasingly more dramatic. The tension created by this interplay resolves slowly, deep lows and tremulous highs merging into a stately communion, a solemn ritual that gives rise to a lyrical figure of fragile beauty. Like a plume of incense floating in the air, this theme unfolds with an elusive grace, dissipating into the surrounding silence before it can reveal itself completely.

Arnaoudov subtitled the piece “Borges Fragment,” and attributed its inspiration to a series of Borgesian motifs—“his Babylonian Universe, of the Library with all the books in the World, of his Rose and of his alter ego.” This seems a heavy burden for six minutes of solo cello, and Ritual III is hardly programmatic music. To me, the Borgesian connection seems more abstract; a refutation of time even as one succumbs to its inevitability, or the apprehension of eternity as a single shared moment.

Compositions

Like much of Arnaoudov’s music, Ritual III exists in a timeless space that recalls a distant dream—it’s not difficult to see why Arnaoudov is attracted to surrealist paintings, ancient languages, and the mystery of religious rites. Found on the 1998 album Compositions, Ritual III is best heard after its predecessors, Ritual I and Ritual II. Both share the meditative quality of “Borges Fragment,” but scored for solo piano, their otherworldliness is tempered by spiky dissonances and percussive outbursts. This places Ritual III in a different context, its solitary cello akin to a Rothko painting placed after a pair of Jackson Pollocks.

The three “Rituals” are framed by chamber works for soprano voice. Based on Sanskrit texts and Gregorian chant, both “Circle of Rites” and “Kyrie” are eerily beautiful, haunted by a sense of longing and never quite achieving tranquility. Unlike Arvo Pärt, another “mystical” composer to whom he is often compared, Gheorghi Arnaoudov is more willing to embrace frailty and imperfection. If Pärt writes to the divine part of us, Arnaoudov speaks to the human. While his music strives to establish a state of transcendence, it’s always colored by a foreknowledge of loss: we can work toward union with the divine, but the gulf can never be truly crossed. This acknowledgement of desire, yearning, and even frustration lends a sublime sense of humanity to his work.

My only critique of this excellent album concerns its packaging. Clearly a low-budget production, Compositions features minimal liner notes, and fails to include the texts for “Circle of Rites” or “Kyrie.” While a few of the instruments are miked a bit too closely for my taste, the overall recording quality is good, and the playing is first-rate.

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Liner Notes

Liner Notes from the 1998 Gega CD

Ritual III was composed together with Ritual II and bears also the title “Borges-Fragment for solo cello.” The author says that this work is “a gesture of reason and mind in our striving after God. A gesture of Borges, of his Babylonian Universe, of the Library with all the books in the World, of his Rose and of his alter ego.”

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Other Arnaoudov Albums of Interest

Gheorghi Arnaoudov is a composer that deserves a wider audience, from fans of traditional classical to those who favor the esoteric in all its forms. While neither of the following albums contain Borges-related material, they are both worth a listen!

Empire of Light
Concord, 1997

This wonderful album focuses on Arnaoudov’s compositions for piano. While perhaps more uniform than the pieces found on Compositions, the works on Empire of Light convey a similar sense of longing and exotic beauty. Ritual I and Ritual II are present on both collections; here Angela Tosheva takes them slower than Boyan Vodenicharov, and, in my opinion, shows greater sensitivity to the material. Released by Concord Records, Empire of Light boasts superior packaging and liner notes than the Gega CD.

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The Way of the Birds
Labor Records, 2010

This album was released by Labor Records in 2010. It includes FOOTNOTE (…und Isolde/ns Winkfall lassen…)—an imaginary interlude to the second act of “Tristan and Isolde” after the text of James Joyce, a piece written in 1991 that combines a poem by James Joyce with themes from Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. Commentary for this album is planned in the near future, but until then, here’s the blurb from Labor Records:

Labor Records new release presents Bulgarian composer Gheorghi Arnaoudov’s highly original and hauntingly imaginative musical canvases of sound and text pregnant with movement and stasis.

Bulgarian composer Gheorghi Arnaoudov has forged a profound body of work deeply rooted in minimalism and, at the same time, creating an intensely imaginative, vibrating sound world that constantly defies convention. His vital use of a variety of literary sources, aesthetic ideas, and collaborations with other art forms distinguish his music in today’s European concert culture. Labor Records’ latest release, The Way of the Birds, presents four sound-poems from Bulgaria’s most cosmopolitan compositional voice at the height of his powers, music that captures the freedom of flight and engages in conversations with poets, philosophers, and folk traditions across the ages.

The Way of the Birds I–III (1995-1996) represent three large fragments from Arnaudov’s cycle of tone-poems for soprano and various chamber ensembles based on medieval Bulgarian love texts from the 17th and 18th centuries as collected in the 1861 Zagreb edition of the Miladinovi brothers’ Bulgarian Folksongs. Growing organically out of collaborations with Bulgarian choreographer Mila Iskrenova, these sumptuous works weave authentic ritual chants and amorous texts into polymorphous, dream-like dances suggesting the sensation of flight.

Arnaoudov’s FOOTNOTE (…und Isolde/ns Winkfall lassen) was written in 1991 for voice (Sprechstimme), cello, and chamber orchestra; it is based on the poem “A Prayer” (1924) from the Pomes Penyeach collection by James Joyce. Subtitled “An Imaginary Interlude to the Second Act of Tristan and Isolde”, FOOTNOTE refers to the scene in which Isolde, after her meeting with Brangäne, waits impatiently for the arrival of Tristan. The German subtitle is also imaginary—a strange combination of an archaic possessive form and a semiotic neologism.

Experiencing these works, performed at an extraordinarily high musical level by some of Bulgaria’s top artists, is to enter into Arnaoudov’s sublime, surrealistic sound world of colors and vibrations, of emotion and meaning. Labor Records continues its tradition of presenting music of exceptional creativity with this release of Gheorghi Arnaoudov’s music of stasis—an intense minimalism full of emotion and silence—music that is both of our time and beyond time.

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Additional Information

Ritual III on YouTube — You can listen to Ritual III, “Borges Fragment” on YouTube. Played by Kalina Krusteva, it is the same version that appears on Compositions.

Gheorghi Arnaoudov Website — The composer’s official homepage is the most complete source of Arnaoudov information on the Web.

Music Bulgara Arnaoudov Page — Musica Bulgara hosts a small page on Arnaoudov.

Wikipedia Arnaoudov Page — Wikipedia maintains a brief page on Arnaoudov in English.

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Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 8 September 2019
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