2018 Üç Anayasa, 10`, for 4 voices and Oud

The five musicians behave like a single piano, performing each line in combination with the next line, which in turn is repeated in combination with the following line. However certain identities do emerge on occasion and disturb the mechanism. In Üç Anayasa there is an assemblage of three different texts meant to invoke the Earth-figure’s isolated balance of forces. Two of these fragments are extracted from different parts of Platon’s Symposium (Word Source II and III) whereas the third is a miniature poem by Cemal Süreya (Word Source I).

Word Source III is a rearranged citation from Diotima’s speech dealing with the ephemerality of the body and the mind. It is arranged as an automaton-like procession of notions, each of which are invoked two times, first coupled with γίγνεται (arises), then with ἀπόλλυται (fades). It underscores the principle of repetition and takes the other texts into a round frame of immersive blackness not unlike that which embraces the Earth-figure in Earthrise.

Word Source II is an extract from Diotima’s speech as well, from a later passage dealing with the famous “ladder of Eros.” This text fragment in Ancient Greek is somehow musical in itself and this has tempted me to set it to music as a torrent of vowels and consonants, if not an intelligible one. Whereas the crux of this passage in the original text is the last stage of the ladder, “love for love itself“, I have deleted this last stage. What is left of the “ladder” is a spiralling perpetual loop which is mirrored by the spiral composition of the singers in space and a certain tendency of the voices to enter in ascending order.

Word Source I is a short poem from Cemal Süreya. This poem was chosen because it exhibits a certain light-hearted simplicity of mind. It contains some flower names, “akasya,” “gül“ and “zakkum” which are made use of as spectromorphologic material for the greater part of the piece.