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Programme Note

Composer note:


The garden of joy and sorrow is a one-movement piece for harp, flute and viola. It was conceived under the strong influence of two directly contradictory literary phenomena: 1) the work “Sayat-Nova” by Iv Oganov (Moscow), about the famous Eastern story-teller and singer, and 2) verses by the 20th century German poet Francisco Tanzer. Vivid Eastern color was counterposed to a typically Western consciousness. But both of these works had significant inner similarities: their contemplativeness and refinement.

Such phrases in Iv Oganov – “the ordeal of a flower’s pain,” “…the peal of the singing garden grew…,” “…the revelation of the rose…,” “…the lotus was set aflame by music,” “…the white garden began to ring again with diamond borders…” – impelled me to a concrete aural perception of this garden.

And, on the other hand, all this ecstatic flowering of the garden was expressed naturally in the sum reflections of the F. Tanzer about the world and its wholeness.

At the basis of the musical rendering of the form of this piece is the opposition of the bright, major coloration of the sphere of natural harmonics against the expression of the intervals of minor second and minor third.

--Sofia Gubaidulina