All that is solid (2022, revised 2024)
16 voices
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ca. 5 minutes
Commissioned by Harold Rosenbaum and New York Virtuoso Singers
Premiere: Harold Rosenbaum and New York Virtuoso Singers at Christ & St Stephan's Church, New York in May 2024.
Program Note
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
— Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx (trans. Samuel Moore)
“All that is solid melts into air”, Samuel Moore’s translation of Marx’s words in the Communist Manifesto, carries for me an ocean of dimensionalities that are simultaneously philosophical, political, and poetic.
What does it become when it encounters music—voices?
Emerging as whispers on the verge of inaudibility and illegibility, the voices transform into a substantial singular entity, entangled in inner discord yet seemingly indestructible in its solidity, until that final utterance gushes into the air, reverberates throughout space, and dissipates.