Borges Music – Gheorghi Arnaoudov

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 René 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

Each of Gheorghi Arnaoudov’s Borges-related works has its own page with information, reviews, liner notes, and off-site music samples.

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

Phantasmagorias I (2010)
Also known as the Concerto for Violin, Harpsichord, Keyboard instruments, Percussion, and Orchestra, its three moments were inspired by The Book of Imaginary Beings. A Garden profile and review are coming in early 2020, but until then, this link takes you to Arnaoudov’s own description.

Notes of the Phantom Woman (2020)
A chamber opera for female voice, prepared piano, percussion, and electronics, Notes of the Phantom Woman is a Monodrama based on the work of Bulgarian poet Iana Boukova and Borges’ “The Sect of the Phoenix.” It is scheduled to premiere in Vancouver in November 2020. The link takes you to Arnaoudov’s announcement.

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.

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.

Additional Information

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.

Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 17 December 2019
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