Product Description
Stile Antico: On a theme of Palestrina (2012) for 5-voice cello ensemble
The title Stile Antico refers a style of musical composition from the 16th century which was often employed in church music, because it allowed the words (sacred text) of each singer to be clearly heard. This pre-classical polyphony was many-voiced and without instrumental accompaniment.
Inspired by a theme from a mass by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525 1594) Praestet hoc nati
genitor, I present a modern cello ensemble rendition of this ancient style.
Most conspicuous of the works attributes is the use of time. Rather than moving the musical ideas and themes towards a goal or through structural development and a sense of progress, the music (and time) unfolds perhaps as the natural swing of a pendulum; neither clinging to a past, nor anticipating a future. The listener beholds one moment continuously being reshaped through sound.
Also, the concepts of melody and harmony as we assume them today are blurred. Of the five players, no one has the melody, no one has the harmony, yet together the ensemble combines to create a continuous flux of melodic-harmony (or harmonic-melody). This idea is of another type of stile antico. Within the ideas of alchemy, which richly influenced the music of the 16th century and beyond, exists the concept that "one plus one equals three." That is, two objects also create a between-ness. So too with musical voices; the combination of two voices creates a new between-ness. Through out this work the individual cellists create a continuously shifting canvas of between-ness. The music and the performers ask for a renewed perception of the many between-nesses of our present moment.
www.kimdiehnelt.com
(c) 2012 (ASCAP)
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.