Instrumentation

2(I=picc.II=afl).2(I=wdbl).2(II=wdbl).2(I=crot) – 2100 – perc(1): mar/crot – synth (e.g. Yamaha SY77) – harp – strings (min 5.4.3.2.1) Electronics: synth or sampler, small mixer

Availability

Score, parts and disk for SY77 for hire

Programme Notes

Death constantly unweaves the thoughts that we have, in the course of our lives, so painstakingly woven together. Books obstruct His work, persistently defying the rapid crumbling of our edifices of thought and memory whose only hope might or might not have been to trickle through in merely oral traditions. On reading Plato or the Nag Hammadi library or Boethius or Aquinas or Rumi or Woolf we foil Him and are, momentarily, triumphant. He has not ruined everything. He gets his spoke in, of course, in that when we read we change through our own colour of spectacles what has been preserved. But the decay is infinitely slower than it would have been without the written word. Books also call across space. This piece of music also does both, as metaphor. Calling Across Time was commissioned by The British Library to celebrate the opening of its new building - designed by Colin St. John Wilson - on June 13th 1998. Jonathan Harvey

Calling Across Time

Theatersaal, Saalbau (Witten, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany)

WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln/Peter Rundel

Calling Across Time

Hear & Now broadcast

BBC Radio 3 (United Kingdom)

Guildhall School of Music Symphony Orchestra/Richard Baker

Calling Across Time

1pm + Radio 3 broadcast - 10.30pm hear & Now

Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre (London, United Kingdom)

Guildhall School of Music Symphony Orchestra/Richard Baker

Calling Across Time

St John's Church, Waterloo (London, United Kingdom)

Nicholas Cleobury/Southbank Sinfonia

Calling Across Time

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, Portugal)

Gulbenkian Orchestra/Lorraine Vaillancourt