Borges Music – Arnaoudov “Phantasmagorias I”
- At August 08, 2024
- By Great Quail
- In Borges
0
Mythology is a term derived from μῦθος—and that means a word, speech, whereas mystique comes from μύστης—a derivative of μύω—“to close” (in the ancient practice of initiation—the eyes or the mouth), “to keep silent.” To define these two categories derived from sound and silence, is something great.
—Gheorghi Arnaoudov
Phantasmagorias I
(2010)
Concerto for Violin, Harpsichord, Keyboard Instruments, Percussion, and Orchestra
I. “Ficciones.” Molto allegro
II. “El sueño.” Andante
III. “El libro de los seres imaginarios.” Moderato-Allegro – Moderato-Allegro
Written between 2008–2010, Phantasmagorias I is a violin concerto inspired by the works of Jorge Luis Borges. For those accustomed to Arnaoudov’s more spiritual or abstract pieces, this concerto shows a surprisingly dynamic side to the composer, who keeps his virtuoso soloist playing continually against various combinations of strings, keyboards, and percussion instruments.
Bearing the subtitle “Ficciones,” the first movement opens explosively. Rocking across a battery of kettle drums, the violin remains afloat by sheer force of will, occasionally taking time to breathe whenever the drums subside to reveal a friendly shoal of fellow strings. Although the music is not constructed around arpeggios or repetitive cells, the movement shares the propulsive character of late American minimalism, particularly the chugging motifs of John Adams or the “bursting from the gate” first movement of Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 8. Arnaoudov describes the movement as the “continuous, almost hysterical mechanical tension of a single machine, built up on the basis of a virtuoso violin part.” Given its provocative subtitle, one wonders if that “single machine” is not the implacable momentum that lurks behind stories like “Tlön” and “The Babylon Lottery;” but the title “The Circular Ruins” feels just as appropriate to describe its whirling energy. The movement also evokes a madcap dance, the kind of witch’s sabbat popularized in late Romantic music. Indeed, the violin embarks on a diabolic cadenza some four minutes into the piece, summoning the orchestra to a lilting St. Vitus dance before being swept away to a dramatic conclusion.
The second movement is named after “El sueño,” Borges’ 1964 poem about the melancholy and mystery of dreams. It begins with a dramatic flourish on the low strings, but soon the violin appears, offering a trembling melody suspended in space against a backdrop of chiming glockenspiel. The violin develops over long, sustained chords on the strings, “in a trance which the nightwatch gilds with dreams.” A false ending gives way to a coda of sorts, the soloist now playing within the strings rather than floating above them. Another lovely melody emerges as the percussion reawakens, gently tumbling the movement to a final, climactic surge.
The final movement is named after The Book of Imaginary Beings. Arnaoudov was not the first composer inspired by Borges’ whimsical catalog, and he wasn’t the last—Robert Parris drew from the work in 1972 and 1983 for his Book of Imaginary Beings, and Mason Bates flipped through its pages in 2015 for his Anthology of Fantastic Zoology. But while these Americans tapped individual creatures for musical portraits—their names stamping the movements and their descriptions informing the compositional process—Arnaoudov seems inspired by the very notion of the book itself, and only in program notes does he reveal his favorite entries: the phoenix, the unicorn, the King of Fire and His Steeds, a handful of angels; and most curiously, Animals in the Forms of Spheres. There’s a processional feel to the movement: the curtain opens suspensefully, the cages are unlocked; and a parade of figures dance across the stage, the violin moving fluidly between musical forms. While it’s easy to interpret the exotic sounds of the harpsichord and celesta as representing the antiquated and the mystical, there’s no one moment where the listener thinks, “Ah, clearly that’s a unicorn!” (Or perhaps, “How easy it it would be not to think of a tiger!”) Arnaoudov’s bestiary feels more like a tapestry than individual portraits, a joyous celebration of the imagination that weaves disparate styles into a cohesive texture. The concerto ends triumphantly, a processional of playful figures tumbling from sight as the curtain falls.
Notes
By Gheorghi Arnaoudov
Adapted from the Composer’s Homepage
2020
Phantasmagorias I: Concerto for violin, harpsichord, keyboard instruments, percussion and string orchestra was written in 2008-2010 and recorded in January 2011 in collaboration with the British violinist Roy Theaker and the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gheorghi Dimitrov.
The world premiere of Phantasmagorias I was presented in London on 25 November 2012 at the St John’s Smith Square Concert Hall by the violonist Ivo Stankov, the Arcadia Mundi/I Maestri Orchestra and the conductor George Hlawiczka. The Bulgarian premiere of the concerto took place in Sofia on 10 April 2013 with Mila Georgieva as a soloist and the Sofia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Deyan Pavlov. The concerto is written for violin with small string orchestra accompaniment coupled with a selected set of percussion and keyboards arranged in several configurations and assigned various tasks in each of the three parts of the work. It is based on The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges (first published in 1957 under the original title Manual de zoologia fantastica).
I.
In the first part—Ficciones. Molto Allegro, the selected set consists of kettle-drums and four tom-toms which strengthen and emphasize the continuous, almost hysterical mechanical tension of a single machine, built up on the basis of a virtuoso violin part.
II.
El sueño
Si el sueño fuera (como dicen) una
tregua, un puro reposo de la mente,
¿por qué, si te despiertan bruscamente,
sientes que te han robado una fortuna?
¿Por qué es tan triste madrugar? La hora
nos despoja de un don inconcebible,
tan íntimo que sólo es traducible
en un sopor que la vigilia dora
de sueños, que bien pueden ser reflejos
truncos de los tesoros de la sombra,
de un orbe intemporal que no se nombra
y que el día deforma en sus espejos.
¿Quién serás esta noche en el oscuro
sueño, del otro lado de su muro?
—J.L. Borges, from El otro, el mismo (1964)
Dream
If dreaming really were a kind of truce
(as people claim), a sheer repose of mind,
why then if you should waken up abruptly,
do you feel that something has been stolen from you?
Why should it be so sad, the early morning?
It robs us of an inconceivable gift,
so intimate it is only knowable
in a trance which the nightwatch gilds with dreams,
dreams that might very well be reflections,
fragments from the treasure-house of darkness,
from the timeless sphere that does not have a name,
and that the day distorts in its mirrors.
Who will you be tonight in your dreamfall
into the dark, on the other side of the wall?
—Translation by Alastair Reid
In the second part—El Sueño. Andante, it is the glockenspiel as a petite colorful tinge that accompanies the violin cantilena at the end of its first part.
III.
And at the end is the third part—El libro de los seres imaginarios. Moderato-Allegro Moderato-Allegro, with its harpsichord play, solo celesta and percussion-like piano, that is, instruments assigned almost theatrical roles in a kaleidoscopic part bearing the subtitle “Manual de zoologia fantistica” which was inspired by the phantasmagoric creatures created by one of my most favorite authors Jorge Luis Borges. Here the “animals” are five: Phoenix, Unicorn, A King of Fire and His Steed, Animals in the Form of Spheres, and [the angels] Haniel, Kafziel, Azriel, and Aniel.
I emphasize the role of these instruments albeit sometimes they are but slight touches that work together to build a grander surrealist picture laden with all kinds of images and references to various styles. It is on purpose that I stress the orchestral structure because of its role in the entire piece and also because of its interaction with the almost continuous part of the solo violin. The violin solo is usually one the greatest challenges to a composer, especially when he is not a violinist. Typically the traps of pianist thinking and the application of keyboard methods to violin solos are the most frequent temptation. It was something I was trying to avoid since I started working on this piece. In this case, my collaboration with the violinists Roy Theaker, Ivo Stankov, and Mila Georgieva during my work on the concerto was more than fruitful.
Animals in the Form of Spheres
The sphere is the most uniform of solid bodies since every point on its surface is equidistant from its centre. Because of this, and because of its ability to revolve on an axis without straying from a fixed place, Plato (Timaeus, 33) approved the judgement of the Demiurge, who gave the world a spherical shape. Plato thought the world to be a living being and in the Laws (898) stated that the planets and stars were living as well. In this way, he enriched fantastic zoology with vast spherical animals and cast aspersions on those slow-witted astronomers who failed to understand that the circular course of heavenly bodies was voluntary. In Alexandria over five hundred years later, Origen, one of the Fathers of the Church, taught that the blessed would come back to life in the form of spheres and would enter rolling into Heaven.
During the Renaissance, the idea of Heaven as an animal reappeared in Lucilio Vanini; the Neoplatonist Marsilio Ficino spoke of the hair, teeth, and bones of the earth; and Giordano Bruno felt that the planets were great peaceful animals, warm-blooded, with regular habits, and endowed with reason. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler debated with the English mystic Robert Fludd which of them had first conceived the notion of the earth as a living monster, ‘whose whalelike breathing, changing with sleep and wakefulness, produces the ebb and flow of the sea’. The anatomy, the feeding habits, the colour, the memory, and the imaginative and shaping faculties of the monster were sedulously studied by Kepler.
In the nineteenth century, the German psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner (a man praised by William James in his A Pluralistic Universe) rethought the preceding ideas with all the earnestness of a child. Anyone not belittling his hypothesis that the earth, our mother, is an organism – an organism superior to plants, animals, and men – may look into the pious pages of Fechner’s Zend-Avesta. There we read, for example, that the earth’s spherical shape is that of the human eye, the noblest organ of our body. Also, that ‘if the sky is really the home of angels, these angels are obviously the stars, for the sky has no other inhabitants’.
—Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings. Translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Recordings
Gheorghi Arnaoudov: Phantasmagorias I” (2010)
Conductor: Georgi Dimitrov
Musicians: Bulgarian National Radio Orchestra
Violin: Roy Theaker
CD: Immutable Codes: Violin Concertos. Southbank Music (2017)
Purchase: Digital [Amazon | Qobuz]
Online: YouTube [Album Playlist]
The only commercial recording of Phantasmagorias I is on a digital album called Immutable Codes: Violin Concertos, released by Southbank Music and featuring the Bulgarian National Radio Orchestra conducted by Georgi Dimitrov. The album contains Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Arnaoudov’s Phantasmagorias I, here named Concerto for Violin, Harpsichord, Percussion & Strings and stripped of all Borgesian context. There are no liner notes; an unfortunate concession to budget pricing.
Another unfortunate concession is the lackluster sound quality—I’m unfamiliar with Southbank Records, but this recording lacks the definition and clarity one associates with any number of modern classical labels. The violin is appropriately front and center and the strings sound fine; but the remainder of the orchestra is hopelessly muddled. The drums lack presence and punch, the harpsichord is barely audible, and the “color” instruments like glockenspiel and celesta are submerged in the mix. The soloist is Roy Theaker, a British-Australian violinist with a career that includes Melbourne’s East End musical theater as well as classical music. His playing is fierce and energetic, but occasionally trades nuance for showmanship. Still, this is the only recording of Phantasmagorias I available, and Theaker should be roundly praised for championing this wonderful concerto!
Additional Information
Additional InformationGheorghi Arnaoudov Website
The composer’s official homepage is the most complete source of Arnaoudov information on the Web.
Gheorghi Arnaoudov Borges-Related Works
Gheorghi Arnaoudov Main Page
Return to the Garden of Forking Path’s Gheorghi Arnaoudov profile.
Offertorium II after Jorge Luis Borges (1991)
Described on the composer’s homepage as “dance theatre,” Offertorium is Arnaoudov’s first piece inspired by Borges. It was choreographed by Mila Iskrenova. [Unreleased. This link directs you to Arnaoudov’s homepage.]
Ritual III, “Borges Fragment” (1992)
A work featured on the 1998 disc Compositions, this is a meditation for solo cello.
Phantasmagorias III (2010)
A string quartet based on The Book of Imaginary Beings, this piece is subtitled “Imaginarium super Jorge Luis Borges.” [Unreleased. This link directs you to Arnaoudov’s homepage.]
Seven and One Nights (Catalog of Nightmares, Poetry, Blindness, Buddhism and Kabbalah) (2021)
A work for violin, bass clarinet and piano, Seven and One Nights is based on Borges’ series of lectures Siete Noches. [Unreleased. This link takes you the description of the NYC World Premiere.]
Notes of the Phantom Woman (2024)
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.” [Unreleased. This link directs you to Arnaoudov’s homepage.]
Author: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 9 August 2024
Borges Music Page: Borges Music
Main Borges Page: The Garden of Forking Paths
Contact: quail(at)shipwrecklibrary(dot)com