for soprano and string orchestra (2022)
l'appel du vide
Regensburg Chamber Music Festival
Fifth Regensburg Composition Competition 2022
Regensburg, Germany
September 18th, 2022
Live recording
The piece was premiered by the soprano Kaoko Amano
and the Camerata Goltz.
The text is based on and has been adjusted from the original text by Jason Polakis titled “trapped in perpetual stasis”.
•
Oh, mighty Oizys, the most dreaded of demons and gods your poisonous filaments prod, infecting the darkest corners of my psyche.
Rendering my mind, a barren wasteland, silently lost in a haze, out of sync with reality.
As if I lost a step somewhere and accidentally shifted out of phase.
Now I awkwardly glance through a foggy window as life continues around me. Introspection replaces reality, as I oscillate between aimlessly wandering through murky mental caverns and scouring my dreamscape for memories of loss, for those defining moments.
Those pivotal moments in space and time, the gravity of which only becomes apparent in hindsight.
The chaos of life.
The vicissitudes of life.
How bitter the remembrance of things past.
We are but empty husks left behind by broken promises, simulacra hollowed by rejection.
Alas, there is no hope, only loss.
Happiness eludes me.
I’M DROWNING!
We are but empty husks left behind by broken promises by broken promises
broken
broken
A life shattered through betrayal and abandonment, each shard a reflection of agony.
Broken Promises broken Broken promises broken
Doomed to litanies of lament and desolation.
Let us grieve.
Oh, mighty Oizys, the most tangible of myths, your traces left with cataclysmic abundance.
How is one to endure?
They say time heals all, but they forget the destructive force of time, as it chips away at sanity’s facade until the houses of lies collapse. A cascade of misery, from the first light to the final dawn.
The void beckons.
HERE
I will construct a monument to tragedy in your honor. In defiance of occhiolism, a temple erect of materials profound;
MISERY
ANXIETY
GRIEF
and depression.
Every brick a painful memory.
In memory of the casualties of life...
the casualties of my life...
For suffering is sacred and pain is holy...
Let us pray...
