Output details

Composition: Ets HaDa’at (The Tree of Knowledge), for flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano, violin, violoncello, soprano and live electronics.

Duration: 15:00.

First Performance: HaTeva, Contempo festival: one hundred years of the establishment of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo, Israel, 20/2/2009, Ensemble Meitar, Reut Ventorero (soprano), Guy Feder (conductor).

Commissioned by Ensemble Meitar.

Prizes: Winner of the International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition 2011, http://composition2011.weebly.com/rajmil-fischman.html.

Online recording: Ensemble Meitar: http://vimeo.com/69247483.

This work follows previous research on meaning in music and language, based on the premise that language propitiates the elaboration of rational discourse, while musical narrative enables critical discourse by means of its affective power and capacity for succinctness [1] [2]. Music and text are actually combined to convey a contemporary interpretation of the biblical expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, in the context of the Middle East conflict. This work also addresses ongoing concerns for the establishment of aesthetic links between electronic/non-electronic sounds, this time focusing on the integration of live electronics as a chamber ensemble participant , extending the singer’s vocal utterances through signal processing.

Affective power/succinctness are realised through the following:

1. Direct mimesis (Emmerson, 1986), e.g. ‘crowd’ that ‘emerges from towns in the deep’, resulting from processing the singer’s voice (bars 176-93, 7:17-7:45).

2. Climatic build-up: e.g. singing of syllables/phonemes from ‘I listen to cries, / sighs, screams’ and subsequent granulation/comb filtering (bars 116-46, 7:17-7:45), leading to a climax on ‘mourning calls’ (SHCHOL). Also, electronic and instrumental sounds are linked through timbral affinity and corresponding harmonic content (e.g. sul-ponticello strings and comb filters).

3. integration of inter-cultural materials into the main discourse, e.g.:

• Metaphorical inversion of the yearning of a landless people by setting the Israeli National Anthem text to a (pseudo)-Middle Eastern melisma and its subsequent granulation (bars 236-9, 9:47.5-10:28), followed by a dislocated quotation of the actual Anthem’s melody (bars 241-3, 10:48-10:56).

• Citation of the melody of the Jewish mourning prayer El Maleh Rachamim, set to text citing the humanistic spirit of Judaism (bars 245-55, 11:00.5-12:12).

[1] Fischman R. 2007 And I Think to Myself.... (2001-2). On a ‘wonderful’ World. EMF CD063

[2] Fischman R. 2008. ‘Mimetic Space – Unravelled’. Organised Sound 13(2): 111-22.