大象传媒

Sappho/ Bioluminescence (2019)

Part 1 of Annunciation Triptych, 3-part work for orchestra (2019-2022)

Co-commissioned by:

The 大象传媒 for the 大象传媒 Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Tectonics Festival

WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne for Acht Brücken Festival

Premieres:

1 May 2022, 大象传媒 Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov, Tectonics Festival, Glasgow

29 April 2022, WDR Sinfonieorchester conducted by Cristian M膬celaru, German premiere of full trilogy, Acht Brücken Festival, Cologne

Annunciation Triptych, 3-part work for orchestra (2019-2022)

I. Sappho/ Bioluminescence

II. Mary/ Transcendence after Trauma

III. Fatimah/ Flowers of Jubilation

This orchestral trilogy celebrates 3 key icons of women’s spirituality & explores themes of revelation and ritual as the connecting tissue between different traditions. Sappho’s world of erotic trance and hallucination, Mary’s Visitation by the Angel and Passion Play, Fatimah as the ‘seed of light’ in Islamic traditions – these stories are also commentaries on ecological, spiritual and transcultural themes in our times.

Sappho/ Bioluminescence (2019)

1. 1. Sappho

Excerpt from Sappho #94 from Anne Carson’s ‘If Not, Winter. Fragments of Sappho’, from Mario Petrucci’s ‘Sappho’,

New York, Vintage Books, 2002. London, Perdika Press, 2008

峒�ξ委ης π蠈θο[ν ].ν委δων you would let loose your longing

κω峤�τε τις [ ο峤擼τε τι and neither any [ ] nor any Pick any path of concrete or

峒�ρον ο峤�δ’ 峤怺 ] holy place nor crock to this spirited place

峒�πλετ’ 峤�πποθεν 峒�μμες 峒�π苇σκομεν, was there from which we were absent whose orchard-body belongingly

offers that flickering, altered aroma -

ο峤�κ 峒�λσος , [ ] . ρος no grove [ ] no dance groves on fire

]ψοφος ] no sound

] . . . οιδιαι [

Only two complete poems survive amongst fragmentary remains, some comprising just a phrase, a word or part of a word, of the nine books

of poetry by Sappho (c.630 B.C.E.) that are recorded to have been held in the Great Library of Alexandria. Yet her words have gained iconic power over the ages and compel with their extraordinary beauty. We barely know her work and imagination counts for more than the real

when we are faced with what is missing. The extant fragments are like depth charges: powerfully explosive in their intensity whilst often

dealing in the most delicately suggestive lyrics celebrating the Goddess Aphrodite and her realms of feminine beauty and luminescent passion.

These enigmatic communications from a lost archaic world are also testament to a depth of longing that resides in us.

The broken fragments call out to and find resonance with listeners in a contemporary time and space.

This is the ‘annunciation’ – not only an ‘announcement’ but a summoning power that precipitates anew in every encounter. Out of damage

and contamination there is new growth. Signs of desire persist in radiating the possibilities of renewal that speak resurgence to ruin.

1. Assemblage

Like a lot of my compositions that bring together varied, at times seemingly incompatible elements and stories, this one also brings an alien creature into the world of Sappho. I have long written works using preparations of one kind or another – I’ve employed lengths of string, horse-hair wrapped around a bow, blu-tac and mutes to transform the way (human) musicians and (non-human) musical instruments interact to make a new hybrid entity. More than just these physical combinations, my works are often made up of imagined composites of plants, animals, elements, spirits and more, and these kinds of real-fictional assemblages have been a fruitful way for me to open up a space for speculation in my composing. The poetic assemblage can be used to triangulate ideas that are too complex to see from any one perspective. The assemblage can offer ways of activating and structuring relationships between apparently incongruous things that produce new affects and insights – that is how poetry works after all.

1. Bioluminescence

The triangulation I use here involves placing the bioluminescence of creatures who produce light in their bodies next to Sappho in order to understand even more intensely the irradiated nature of her poetry. Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism as the result of a chemical reaction. Bioluminescence may be generated by symbiotic organisms carried within a larger organism.

An intriguing example is the Hawaiian bobtail squid (beloved of eco-philosophers such as Donna Haroway, Anna Tsing and others who ‘think with’ the creature’s symbiotic nature to articulate an ethics of living in troubled times). The squid carries bacteria in its ventral pouch which give off light in a circadian rhythm. The luminescent specks act as a form of ‘invisibility cloak’ or counterillumination so that the squid blends with moonlight on a starry night seeming not to cast a shadow from the perspective of any prey below.

Living cells respond to environmental light and themselves emit light – the world becomes a psychedelic ‘eye’ or multiple eyes which open and close, slowly or suddenly, across a polyphony of temporal scales.

The bacteria, the squid, the ocean, the firmament, the metabolism of light – from micro to macro, these elements form complex patterns that can be understood as expressions of an ‘emergent mind’ or ‘spirit’.

1. Orchestra

The third angle of the assemblage is of course the orchestra – an orchard. Suddenly I am in a grove, a holy place. Everywhere I look there is the flickering of living light. Every step, every sound, every silence connotes the pure presence of eros.

There is no ‘holy place…from which we were absent’.