Page 324 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
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THIS MUST BE THE
FIRST PURPOSE
OF ART … TO
CHANGE US
APOCALYPSIS (1977) R. MURRAY SCHAFER
onceived on the grandest feminism, sentiment, and art). This
IN CONTEXT scale, with multiple vision, clearly opposed to Schafer’s
C ensembles, singers, and ethics, is vanquished in the second
FOCUS instrumentalists, Schafer’s musical part, “Credo.” Here, Schafer adapts
Sonic ecology
spectacle Apocalypsis (1977) is 12 meditations from Giordano
BEFORE part of a long tradition in Western Bruno’s cosmological treatise De
1912 Mahler writes his Eighth art music that extends back to la causa, principio et uno of 1584.
Symphony, a bid “to imagine Monteverdi’s Vespers. An even Each starts, “Lord God is universe,”
the whole universe beginning earlier inspiration is Tallis’s motet creating a cumulative, ritualistic
to ring and resound.” Spem in alium, whose immersive effect. The last proclaims “Universe
use of eight five-voice choirs is one: one act, one form, one soul,
1966 Schafer begins Patria, influenced the 12 spatially arranged one body, one being, the maximum,
a cycle of large-scale music choirs used in the second part of and only,” encapsulating Schafer’s
theatre works conceived for Apocalypsis, “Credo.” spiritual and ecological beliefs. ■
special (often outdoor) spaces.
Opposing sound pollution
AFTER Schafer, who founded the study
1994 The Apocalypse by John of acoustic ecology in the 1960s,
Tavener is premiered at the pursues ecological themes in his
BBC Proms. work, opposing the gradual masking
2003 With Sonntag, Karlheinz of the natural soundscape by
Stockhausen completes his man-made noise. Such themes
seven-opera cycle Licht. are the subject of Apocalypsis.
The first part, “John’s Vision,”
2006 John Luther Adams’s tells of the destruction of the world
The Place Where You Go To using texts from the Bible’s Book of Schafer’s Apocalypsis is inspired by
Listen, a sound and light Revelation and a new Antichrist’s the vision in Revelation in which four
installation reflecting natural vision of good (cities, jet aircraft, horsemen, depicted here in a woodcut
rhythms, opens in Alaska. computers, and “the habit of by Christoph Murer (1558–1614), are
energy”) and evil (museums, the harbingers of the Last Judgment.
See also: Spem in alium 44–45 ■ Monteverdi’s Vespers 64–69 ■ St. Matthew
Passion 98–105 ■ Elijah 170–173 ■ The Dream of Gerontius 218–219
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