contemptus mundi [2021]

for clarinet in C and piano

duration :: 11’30”

Commissioned by the ELISION Ensemble

First performance :: Carl Rosman and Alex Waite (ELISION) — University of Leeds (UK), 11 February 2023

Different geometries of ekstasis: a constantly shifting but always uncontrollable violence. Nothing settles in this relatively short piece: it is a constant stumbling forward from pressure to pressure, sometimes inward and down, sometimes upward and out; against silence or against lungs or against keys or against resolution or against passing time; but the surface is always unstable and the compulsion towards perforating impulse is irresistible. This piece is about pressures.

Laying atop the surface like an obscuring layer of dust are flaking fragments from the fourth-century Apophthegmata Patrum ("Sayings of the Desert Fathers"):

Ἔλεγον περὶ τοῦ ἀββᾶ Ἐλαδίου, ὄτι ­­­­­­­­ἐποίησεν εἴκοσι ἔτη είς τά Κελλία, καὶ οὐκ ἦρέ ποτε τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἄνω, ἰδεἴν τὴν στέγην τῆς ἐκκλησίας.

"It was said of abba Helladius that he lived for twenty years at Kellia and never once raised his eyes to look at the roof of the church."