Inner Circle  

The following music is both the starting point and the distilled remix of my cantata entitled Mandala of the Four Directions. The four duos of Inner Circle represent a microcosm of the four ensembles that make up the instrumentation of the cantata, and, taken as a group, do in fact represent one of those four ensembles. Half of the music of Inner Circle was written and performed before undertaking the main work of the cantata, while the other half has been arranged since the completion of Mandala, to provide a complete musical narrative for the four duos. The concluding section of Inner Circle brings the relationship between the pieces full circle, containing the opening music of Mandala.

The cardinal directions hold cosmological significance for many cultures around the world, and are commonly associated (in various ways) with the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. In this musical ritual, the four directions/elements are first evoked as distinct sound-images, treating the duos in isolation or combined according to the axes of North-South and East-West. In the course of the composition, various alliances are formed and commonalities revealed. North, represented by the double bass and percussion, is here associated with the Earth element. As the element of Earth forms the strongest link between the other three elements, the percussionist of the North duo has a hand in much of the music centering on other duos. There is, however, no strict formula governing the behavior between the four. Freedom of timbre combination becomes more important than differentiation, while the distinct identities of the duos are rearticulated at key points. Solo instrumental voices also become more prominent, occasionally in the context of a “song without words”.

Instrumentation

back to worklist