Aaron Jay Kernis: Second Symphony / Musica Celestis
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Composer: Aaron Jay KernisConductor: Hugh Wolff
Orchestra: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-09-15
Music Label: Phoenix USA
Soundtracks:
- Alarm (SYMPHONY NO.2)
- Air/Ground (SYMPHONY NO.2)
- Barricade (SYMPHONY NO.2)
- MUSICA CELESTIS
- INVISIBLE MOSAIC III
Music reviews of Aaron Jay Kernis: Second Symphony / Musica Celestis
Music Review: Well Worth a Listen
Rating: 4 Stars
Although I believe I had heard Kernis's name mentioned before, probably on the radio, I cannot recall ever hearing any of his music before I picked this disk up purely on a whim on one of those nights that found me wandering around the classical section of the music store, wanting to buy something, but not quite knowing what to buy. (Gee, that sounds pretty sick, doesn't it... ?) The cover was hard to resist, with a human figure leaping through a fireball (but remember these words of wisdom from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey: "Our album covers lied to us, dude!"), so I took a chance and took this CD home to see what it contained.
This disk turned out to be one of the finest CDs I had purchased in quite a while, and judging at least from this recording, Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960 in Philadelphia) is a composer with a promising future. The three-movement Second Symphony is a dramatic work inspired by the Gulf War. Powerful stuff, powerfully performed and recorded, this symphony is a work you can sink your teeth into and play over and over again.
After the fury of the Second Symphony, the mood changes significantly with Musica Celestis, a deeply expressive piece for string orchestra that reaches toward Heaven with sincerity and conviction. This is absolutely lovely music, very touching, very pure and heartfelt.
Kernis's ability to express himself both in the violent fury of the Second Symphony and in the serene beauty of the Musica Celestis indicates that he is certainly not a one-trick composer. Were this CD to contain only these two works, it would be highly recommendable--but there's more.
Invisible Mosaic III stands in contrast to the first two selections on this CD by being more a work of pure musical expression than of emotional expression. Playful, inventive, and colorful, its aim seems to be more to charm than to move the listener, although it will definitely move your woofers from time to time. The ending bears a striking resemblance to the ending of John Adams's Harmonielehre, a resemblance that we will hope represents an act of homage from one American composer to another.
It is really exciting to discover such a wonderful CD by a composer just starting his career. If you are at all a fan of orchestral music by composers such as Shostakovich, Mahler, or Stravinsky, then I urge you to track down this well-recorded Argo CD and audition it for yourself.
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Description of Aaron Jay Kernis: Second Symphony / Musica Celestis
While working on the Second Symphony, Kernis recalls the collective national fixation on images of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. For the composer, these "exerted a kind of fascination and sense of horror at what seemed to be a purely technological war, one that was heavily manipulated by the government for the media." One specific image that haunted Kernis came from the cover of The New York Post, which documented the accidental bombing of an apartment building in Iraq. "Something about the immediate annihilation without warning gave me the sonic image of pulverizing and obliteration" an image with which the Symphony reaches its climax. Kernis describes an overarching narrative structure to the three-movement work, centered on a metaphor of humanity facing the brutalizing machine: "The work is very linear, with the long line put forward in three different contexts in each movement. In the first, the line is set against an unyielding mechanical, rhythmic profile, giving the sense of a wave threatening to overtake the melody. The second movement winnows essentially to melody and accompaniment (with some areas of counterpoint), while in the third the stark line is mostly exposed alone against the wave of percussion. Equally important is the gradual stripping away of layers as the piece goes on." The String Quartet No. 1 takes its name from the subtitle of its slow second movement: "musica celestis." This is also the name Kernis applies to what has become perhaps his best-known work to date. In the tradition of Samuel Barber's similarly extracted Adagio for Strings, Musica Celestis is an arrangement of that Quartet movement for string orchestra (with double bass added), completed in 1991. Kernis ascribes his inspiration to the medieval concept of the music of the spheres, "which refers to the singing of the angels in heaven in praise of God without end." He cites his discovery of Hildegard of Bingen, yet Musica Celestis evinces a broader range of influences: from English pastoralism and the Barber Adagio to the radical simplicity of Beethoven's Heiliger Dankgesang from Op.132 all framed by a sonority reminiscent of Lohengrin's "silvery blue" A major harmonies.Classical CDs
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