THE VOYAGER (2019)
Solo Violin
Duration: 10 minutes 30 seconds
Commissioned and premiered by Joella Pinto
Premiere: 18 April 2019, in Toronto, ON Mazzoleni Concert Hall at the Royal Concervatory of Music
This piece has won a SOCAN foundation: Young Composer’s Prize, second place in Solo and Duets Category
Program note:
In 1977, two spacecraft were sent into space to study Jupiter and Saturn on what later evolved into an interstellar mission. Voyager 1 and 2 were each launched containing a Golden Record serving as a sample time capsule of Earth’s culture – a message in a bottle thrown into the cosmic sea in hopes of reaching intelligent extraterrestrial life in interstellar space.
Among other selections, the Golden Record contains the music of J.S. Bach. The first movement of the second Brandenburg concerto, the ‘Gavotte en Rondeau’ from his Third Partita for Violin, and the C major Prelude and Fugue from book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier were carefully chosen for their balance and symmetry. The music of J.S. Bach captures fleeting, overwhelming moments of passion, every idiom of western musical expression, and reaches into the chasms of human emotion. It is then no question that this eternal music has been selected as part of the time capsule on a seemingly eternal journey through the vast emptiness of space.
The Voyager is a reflection on the music of J.S. Bach, and on the juxtaposition of the old and the new. The objective was to explore the threads of Bach’s influence on the music of the 21st century, and to explore Bach’s music through a lens of the contemporary world.
THE VOYAGER
