Einstein's Inconsistency
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Acknowledgments Recording Engineer and Editor: Paul Griffith Producers: Dale Underwood, Hana Sleeper Liner notes: Andy Skaggs Cover Art “The Eye of Time,” Sherri Tan (sherritan.com) Bruno Philharmonia Flute: C.J. Young; Oboe: Erin Gittlesohn Clarinet: Anabelle Hwang Bassoon: Carlos Felipe Viña Horn: Chris Jackson Timpani & Percussion: Maria Chlebus Piano: Asiya Korepanova Harp: Deborah Fleisher Violin: Tomás Cotik, Adam Diderrich, Melissa Lesniak, Arianne Urban Viola: Rafael Ramirez, Amanda Diaz Cello: Ernesto Cabezas, Ashley Garritson Bass: Jeffery Kipperman Conductor: Thomas Sleeper Thomas Sleeper Special thanks to: Sherri Tan, Pasquale Falcone, Zoe Zeniodi, Joanie Chalakani, Einstein’s Nilda Pradera, Morgan, Angela, Hana and Leyla Sleeper, Jack and Tess Sleeper Recorded in Maurice Gusman Concert Hall August/September, 2014 Inconsistency All works published by Uroboros Music. … a series of operas WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1551 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 Bruno Philharmonia || Thomas Sleeper, conductor ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD Tony Boutté + John Duykers + Caitlin McKechney TEL: 01539 824008 © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD Kimberly Sobe + Jeffrey Williams WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. The Music being himself, facing judgment of his own. What these characters have in common is that they are all at the brink of discovering what it means to exist, and more importantly, how to perceive that existence for The early decades of the 21st century are remarkable times in which to be alive. Technological advances themselves. Like the so-called “singularity” that sci-fi authors and futurist philosophers often predict with happen so rapidly that one sometimes has the heady sensation of living in the future, and the distance respect to artificial intelligence, the characters in these vignettes are waking up to their own self aware- between fantasy and reality gradually narrows to a point just barely out of sight. Each day brings news of ness, and the results are as varied as one would expect. The king (“The King’s Portrait”) feels that he can something so highly improbable as to defy belief. Two magnificent rovers on Mars, a probe landing on a change the memory of his life through sheer will power. The artists of “The Original Voice” see their lives as comet, the discovery of the Higgs Boson, or quantum computing through particle entanglement for a few meaningful only through the validation of spurious (and often vapid) critique. The clerk (“Rubric’s Cubicle”) dizzying examples. Human beings now inhabit a world where nearly every part of our waking lives is domi- seems to exist solely to maintain and enforce arbitrary regulations. And so on. The music is as diverse nated by devices about which we have not the slightest understanding, and the suddenness of this societal as the stories, and herein lies Sleeper’s achievement. Each piece is fresh, perfectly suited to the arcane transformation has sparked speculation that we may be on the cusp of a new species, eclipsing Homo material, at times breathtakingly gorgeous, as in “The Monarch,” and at times playful and witty (“Rubric’s Sapiens altogether. At the root of all this (call it what you will; chaos, progress?) lies the natural curiosity Cubicle,” “The Original Voice”). When taken as a whole, the listener is swept up into a chimeric whirlwind, and capacity for wonder that has been the impetus for every discovery since fire and the knapping of spear but this is no mere thrill ride, to be enjoyed and forgotten. Einstein’s Inconsistency takes the listener into points. a sort of sonic funhouse, where the deepest and most primal of human anxieties is displayed in dazzling Human imagination, that ceaseless engine of construction, imbues all fields of endeavor, and each variety, and one cannot experience this work and remain unaltered by it. In a fittingly ambiguous and yet in turn fuels the other. It is a relatively modern idea that disparate fields such as physics, astronomy, wholly satisfying conclusion, Job answers the Supreme Being in the universe by not answering him, and in mathematics, philosophy and art exist in clearly defined boxes, studiously unaware of each other and con- a sense redeems every other character in the cycle. tent to carve their own paths individually. Presumably Thomas Sleeper would find the notion ludicrous, and Einstein’s Inconsistency is clearly a deeply personal piece for Thomas Sleeper, and contains some here is a paradox: Thomas Sleeper is a thoroughly modern, forward-looking composer who would probably of his most inventive and powerful music to date. Sleeper’s music is as expansive and mysterious as an have flourished quite well in the Age of Enlightenment. One can easily imagine Sleeper filling the shoes of a ocean, and just as tempting. Those listeners who choose may venture out as far as they like, but a word of man like William Herschel, composing symphonies by day and charting the heavens by night. Sleeper, 21st caution: Here be monsters. century Renaissance man, works at the margins of art where lines blur between science and philosophy, —ANDY SKAGGS spiritual revelation and paranoid delusion, between the observed and the felt. In Einstein’s Inconsistency, Mr. Sleeper applies his considerable skill and creativity to a set of eight short operas, the longest being about 20 minutes with the shortest clocking in at under a minute, and a mere 20 measures of music. On the surface the operas seem unrelated, but each acts as a sort of mosaic tile to create nothing less than a treatise on the very nature of existence itself. There is, as contemporary parlance would have it, a lot to unpack in Giordano Bruno’s mind-bending libretto. A king, anxious over his legacy; a community of artists held in thrall by a flighty and dubious critic; a (possibly) grieving man lost in a sensual dream state; a heretic facing his fears inside the belly of a whale; a bureaucrat obsessed with rule-following; a priest fretting about theft from his parish; a paranoid woman; and finally the supreme Synopsis The Monarch A man tells a mysterious tale about his desire for a woman — we hear other voices from inside his head — Einstein’s Inconsistency intermingling personal story with mythical and religious archetypes — by the end we discover he has wrapped Einstein’s Inconsistency, with text that sets-up a discourse on love, death, values and relative truths is, in his lost “lover” in silk in the belief that her resurrection will bring forth the Monarch — (multiple entendres). fact, a series of progressively shorter operas that work together to make a larger whole. Characters overlap in the various mini-operas and minor characters in one appear as major in another. Each can be produced Leviathan separately, in conjunction with others partially or as a complete unit lasting just under one hour. The longest A heretic (named Job not Jonah) is thrust into the sea and swallowed by a whale. Shocked that he is alive, opera is 21 minutes and the works get progressively shorter until the one minute point is reached with Last and anticipating death, he calls upon God and hears a voice (perhaps his own?) echoing deep within the Minute and Job’s Answer. The eight mini-operas can also be grouped in a pattern following Giordano Bruno’s creature. A dialog ensues — much of it echo based (self reflective) and fear mounts as the voice grows idea of an eternally cyclic history progressing from ||:Theocracy to Aristocracy to Democracy to Anarchy:|| closer and closer to him – no longer the possibility of a simple echo — until finally revealed to be the Approximate durations in minutes: 21, 13, 5, 8, 3, 2, 1, 1. voice, not of god, but of a marionette also swallowed by the whale. The King’s Portrait Rubric’s Cubicle An artist is commissioned to make portrait of the King. The artist makes metaphorical portraits using found A worker enters the office of an administrator in order to “tell him something” but the “clerk” insists they objects like sculptural “still life.” The King is unimpressed until he moves something from the art work and must complete the rubric before any further discussion. The worker has already resigned. discovers a supernatural connection between the art and real life. Inspired, he in tries to dominate the artist and manipulate her work to alter history but is rebuffed. In desperation, he tries to kill her and “wakes up” Saint Anthony’s Loss to discover he is in fact dying on a gurney and the “artist” is his hospice nurse. A priest investigates what he believes to be theft at the alter of St. Anthony (Patron Saint of lost and stolen objects) After observing various people’s requests and contributions, he is shocked to find out who is, in The Original Voice fact, taking St. Anthony’s funds. At an art opening, the critic Pietra Macabeus, is hailed as the “great validator” — various artists are trying to impress her for this validation. She is questioned repeatedly by one artist, Magdelana, about “high” art, Last Minute the idea of providing a primary mystical experience equal to the visions of the prophets and as a public In a seedy bus station, an agitated woman approaches a man with a tabloid declaring that “a comet will soon substitute for climactic experience are proposed. A quote from the writer Mishima that “Suicide is the destroy the earth…” A quick discourse ensues in which the two strangers decide to experience love before greatest form of [self-pleasure]” is taken out of context and Magdelana reappears in the penultimate opera they die — in close and intense embrace, the woman suddenly pulls out a knife and slits the man’s throat, “Last Minute” trying to achieve this through others.