De Angelis

sonally. Two of these in particular have inspired the music of De Angelis: (1)
the feminine elements invested in Hildegard’s vision of the divine and of the
centerpiece of the Christian Faith, the Holy Trinity, and (2) the concept of the
ultimate redemption of Lucifer which is alluded to towards the end of ‘O
gloriosissimi’. Even though clearly discernible in retrospect, the musical treatment
of these two elements was not planned in advance. Like everything
else about this composition, these elements formed into recognizable entities
by themselves, and it was only after I had written a significant portion
of De Angelis that I ‘saw’ them ‘staring’ at me through the pages of my own
work. From that moment of understanding, the composition of De Angelis
turned into a kind of a theological discourse through sound.
This type of discourse is of particular interest to me. I am adverse to textual
creeds, because I feel that text by nature limits its subject matter and creates
a dangerous substitution in the minds of the readers. For example, I wonder
how many Christians today do not actually worship a ‘textual’ God, a god
who comes to them through textual definitions provided by the Creed, the
gospels, and the other sacred texts of each denomination. Moreover, I wonder
to what extent this ‘textual’ God does not replace the ‘actual’ God in a
worshiper’s mind, as the sacred texts become more ‘sacred’ in one’s religious
practice. Music too is a language, but it is a language that has no fixed and
mutually agreed upon vocabulary and syntax. In this sense music is particularly
suited not only for metaphor but also for direct affect: it can convey
great truths through sound without the need to define these truths and
therefore limit them to the extent that spoken and written language do—
with the possible exception of poetry, of course. Music can manifest truth
either directly or through ‘transposition’,
the same way parables and poetry can, whereas theology is
trapped in textual semantics. As a result of this, it comes up against paradoxes
similar to those reached by a variety of disciplines—scientific and/or
otherwise—that depend on textual models of description to convey to the
uninitiated the truths they claim to reveal.
De Angelis started out as a work for mezzo-soprano, choir and
multitrack digital tape playback that incorporated processed recordings
of Hildegard’s antiphon and various drone-like sounds. For the better part
of two months I kept encountering insurmountable—and, to some extent,
inexplicable—problems with the technology, and experienced a writer’s
block, which prevented me from embarking on the composition of the work
beyond the level of ‘sketches’, none of which were particularly satisfactory.
Finally, I decided to dispense with the electroacoustic component altogether
and add three contraltos and drones (offstage voices, crystal glasses, etc.)
which would replace the electronics. I also decided to place the contraltos
at the back of the church to achieve spatial distribution of sound similar to
what the multitrack diffusion system would have provided. From that moment
on, De Angelis virtually ‘wrote itself’ at a speed which for me set a new
record. It felt as if there was a desire independent from me for this work
to go in a certain direction, and that the music would not flow out of me,