Mahler and the Pharaohs: Death and Immortality

He Hath Made Everything Beautiful in its time -- Ecclesiastes 3 : 11 .......................................................................................................................................... Indeed. Even if it takes days, months, years .. and now I see it can happen even in centuries! That is the essence of the book that inspired me so much to write the music I am doing now, as I mentioned briefly in several entries in this blog before. In fact, the inspiration is so powerful that I would let my work now as a "work in progress" for the rest of my life. For the time being, I just concentrate for its premiere and recording which will be just short excerpts of the whole book. .......................................................................................................................................... The book, and therefore my music, bears the title Erstwhile, A Communion of Time. The book is clear, what is not clear is my music. Is it a lyrical symphony, such as Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde"? Is it an opera? Is it a cantata? I might say, in the long run, it is an opera, but for now, let's call it a symphony. I mentioned Mahler's work since Erstwhile will also have that dubious hybrid of half song-cycle half symphony, and in fact in my case it is also an opera. And it deals with the same issues of Mahler's work: pain, loss, love, life, parting and salvation. But Erstwhile was written by Rio Haminoto, a 21st century writer who happens, like me, to be a Trekkie (Star Trek fan, if you still don't know that word) and so the story spans for 7 centuries, which doesn't differ much from Mahler's last few painful years of his life if you believe that time is just the 4th dimension of space. .......................................................................................................................................... But there is another conclusion I took from the book. You see, the whole human life and psychology is focused on two things: the fear of death as our primal terror, and the longing for immortality, a yearning to live forever. I have touched this issue briefly in my only work for piano and orchestra up till now, a 5-minute overture called Fons Juventatis, or The Fountain of Youth. I didn't write it just for fun. It was a happy piece, of course, depicting the spirit of eternal youth (besides the fact that it was written as a birthday present for my friend Erza S.T., the founder of Indonesia Opera Society), but it was also the thing I, and I'm sure we all, painfully yearn. From this yearning for forever, this hurtful sense of passing time, springs most of humanity's greatest achievements, in art, music, literature and architecture. Paradoxically, it is the very awareness that life is fleeting on the wings of time that directs human activity towards the creation of artistic products that possess the durability their creators lack, images in carved stones and marbles and later in paintings and photographs, words in literature, beauty woven in sounds, ideas captured in books and films. Most of civilization is a by-product of the quest of immortality. Mahler's 9 great symphonies and Shakespeare's dramas serve exactly the same purpose as the Pharaoh's pyramides of 5000 years ago. .......................................................................................................................................... But on the other hand, have you seen the film "Highlander" and its fantastic soundtrack by Queen, "Who wants to live forever"? The reason we fear death, as much as we yearn for immortality, is love. We fear the loss of our loved ones, there is no use being immortal if we couldn't share it with our loved ones. As the Vulcans always say, "Live long, and prosper". Just a long life is not enough. And that's the essence of "Erstwhile". Our soul, but not our body, is immortal ... just to find our loved ones. .......................................................................................................................................... Every note of Erstwhile embodies that concept, with motifs that appear "in different clothes" during the whole piece. Time is not the only issue in Erstwhile, places are also important, and so is the music that cultivated the culture of those places. Thanks to the internet, for the last two weeks I've learned and researched history more than the 3 years I learned about it in my highschool. I've therefore discovered that historical documentation of my country is pretty poor, especially the musical ones. So I had to invent many musical ideas based on my incomplete researches and pretend that they are "authentic" so to say. And yes, the composition has started, which means writing those millions of notes. .......................................................................................................................................... John Fowles, the writer of "The French Lieutenant's Woman" interestingly commented that after he'd got half way through the text, the characters started "telling him what to do", as if they wrote their own lines. Well, that's what happening with me now. As usual in big pieces, such as in my two cantatas Ars Amatoria and Libertas I planned carefully the structure before writing the first note, but then the notes themselves determined their structure. And I think I am old (and wise) enough to let them "go their own way" as we say. A good leader is not one who keeps on telling his staff what to do. His staff should know what they are doing. The composer's staff are those notes, they have a life of their own, and I just put them together. They will guide me to boldly go where I have never gone before.