Year composed: 2006
Duration: 5′
Instrumentation: amplified troubadour harp
Commissioned by harpist Victoria Jordanova and recorded on “In a Landscape” album (ArpaViva).
Notes:
Hierosgamos IV is a short work for celtic (troubadour) harp written for my friend and colleague Victoria Jordanova. It is adapted from one of the etudes in my large-scale piano collection Hierosgamos: Seven Studies of Harmony and Resonance.
The hierosgamos is an ancient principle which reveals the ultimate wholeness concealed among pairs of apparent opposites. Literally “sacred marriage”, this mysterious union involves a simultaneous moment of creation and dissolution between the self and the other, a co-terminus spiritualization of matter and a materialization of spirit. In the language of alchemy, Carl Jung spoke of a “chemical wedding”, where the “yang and yin” of things is purified back into an original unity.