Wonder: A Scientific Oratorio
2009 celebrated the International Year of Astronomy, the 40th anniversary of the moon landings and the 200th anniversary of the death of Haydn - composer of The Creation. To mark these significant events, the BBC commissioned Salford-based composer Alan Edward Williams and librettist Philip Goulding to write a 21st century vocal work that reflects our present understanding and scientific knowledge of the creation theory. Following extensive research in astrophysics and cosmology, Alan and Philip created a large-scale, multi-media vocal work that offers a fitting and timely companion piece to the celebrated Haydn oratorio. Although the work tacitly addresses debates about religion and creationism just by being an oratorio (conventionally a work on a religious theme); one of the main emotional subtexts to the piece is the question of how we can be consoled without presupposing a benevolent creator. It’s in her wonder at the beauty, complexity and - as Philip Goulding writes – 'magnificent desolation' of the universe that the character of Thea, an astronomer, finds her consolation.
Haydn wrote his oratorio to celebrate God’s creation of the world (“Let There Be Light…..”). Wonder uses the magical aesthetics of music to express the complex science of Astrophysics. Alan Edward Williams’ music and Philip Goulding’s libretto answer Haydn with a scientific account of the origins of the universe, from the Big Bang, the expansion of the universe and the creation of the first stars, through to the creation of life. This grand theme – expressed by orchestra and chorus – is balanced by a dialogue between Thea and her student Marcus, as Thea confronts her imminent death from cancer and Marcus ponders her life and memory:
MARCUS: Though it might make no sense to you / Now you’re gone I wonder where you are…
THEA: My love, my words are on the wing / Blown by the wind, like the seeds / Of a dandelion clock…
from Wonder: A Scientific Oratorio
Composer: Alan Edward Williams
Libretto: Philip Goulding
3.
MARCUS:
You taught me well my place in your universe. Those years of words - long nights staring at the sky. Me, in the periphery of your vision, believing in you – and that you would always be here. Just after sunset - driving home - it hit me, this new certainty: that I shall someday face our universe alone.
14.
CHOIR:
In comets and in meteorites, we find the building blocks of life. Four billion years ago dust and ice rain down on the young, erupting earth - releasing gas and water on the surface. In the new atmosphere - generated by these upheavals and invasions - the planet cools - and oceans form. Violent tides - created by the moon - slow the earth’s spin and push the moon away. As the moon retreats, the tides subside; the earth is stabilized. In calm, shallow waters life takes hold. Bacteria evolve - single-celled organisms pumping oxygen into the environment - setting the scene for complex life....
15.
MARCUS:
Listening for her footfall in the quiet house. Remembering how, wherever she was - curious, engaged and engaging – a bright light illuminated mine and many lives. But in the deep, dark here-and-now...no consolation.
THEA:
Magnificent!
MARCUS:
Desolation.
16.
THEA:
Magnificent! That we are, that we can be, that I once passed this way is the result of some spectacular good fortune:
CHOIR:
That the relative strengths of the fundamental forces are just right for the stars to create the elements needed to make life. That our sun resides in such a favourable neighbourhood of the milky way, safe from close encounters of a catastrophic kind. That our good earth’s orbit does not wander too close towards the sun, nor too far away. That the moon ensures our planet’s spin is stable...
© Philip Goulding / Alan Edward Williams 2009
DIVERS WINGED CREATURES
Five Choral Songs
Composer: Alan Edward Williams, Texts: Philip Goulding - inspired by the Aberdeen Bestiary
First Performance by MDR Rundfunkchor, Leipzig – April 2008
Review by Peter Korfmacher – from the Leipziger Volkszeitung (review translated by Mick Martin)
The Briton Alan Edward Williams, born in 1970, composes in very British style. His Divers Winged Creatures self-consciously draws on the island's continuously renewed history of vocal music. Owl, jay, bees, blackbird and angel are the winged beings to which the composer pays homage. Philip Goulding wrote the texts for him, and the symbiotic result is not just onomatopoeiacally illustrative, but goes a step further. A surreal magic hovers over this work, located somewhere between a witty madrigal, an organon, and impressionism. Time and again the rascal is glimpsed just round the corner, and it's then that Willams is at his strongest. The British composer shows himself to be an old-fashioned writer in the postive sense of the term. He makes splendid use of the devices and little tricks of the ancients, builds layer upon layer of polyphony, and lashes his piece tightly to the here and now - with noises, scintillating harmonies and flexible metre.
OF ANGELS
Sweet Columba
Deep in sleepless solitude
Was visited by Angels -
Just as in his hunger
Cuthbert was refreshed by the bounty of the Lord
As he saw angels flying heavenward
With the soul of Irish Aidan,
Over the hills at Lammermuir.
When they come unto us a light shall fill the room
And such sweet fragrance shall surround us
And heav’nly music shall be heard.
And we shall see angels
From the mouths of the dying they emerge
Taking the form of voices.
Bright night creatures shaped as spheres or tiny figures -
These are all angels and they shall sing -
And they shall sing as to paradise ascending:
Amen.
© Alan Edward Williams/Philip Goulding 2007
12 STOREYS HIGH
A song cycle for Soprano & Piano
Composer: Alan Edward Williams Texts: Philip Goulding
First performance by Gavin Wayte (piano) and Zoe Milton-Brown (soprano), Bridgewater Hall, Manchester - February 2010
12 Storeys High is a new song cycle bringing together popular and classical traditions of songwriting. Composer Alan Edward Williams teamed up with poet and playwright Philip Goulding to produce a modern song cycle. Each individual song depicts a different character living in the same 12-storey block of flats in contemporary Britain. The writers have created a genre that draws as much from the Smiths’ How Soon is Now or the cinema of Kieślowski as it does from Schumann’s Dichterliebe, or Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin.
IN THE FIRST PLACE
In the first place there is love.
They may not be here long but will remember:
The knocking pipes, the tap that drips all night.
In the first place there is love.
Things will not be the same again hereafter.
The cheapest lines chime like Hallelujahs.
The poems he writes and leaves for her to find:
Let us speak about your eyes.
Let us speak about your smile.
Maybe later he might blush to be reminded.
The spring in his step
When she’d say “Come back to bed”.
These days are ours and we are happy here.
And we are happy here.
© Alan Edward Williams/Philip Goulding 2005
Lesley-Jane Rogers performs 12 Storeys High. Photograph by kind permission of Ian Tilton.