Buddha Goes to Bayreuth

by Robert Moran

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Moran’s Buddha goes to Bayreuth is scored for two choirs, two string ensembles, solo countertenor, and very long reverb. Rupert Huber conducts the huge forces from Salzburg and Stuttgart though you’d be hard pressed to deduce any metrical pulse, just timeless soaring melodies and sonorities that wallow around the space as they will. Those ‘echo choruses’ of Purcell and Monteverdi have nothing on this real-life phenomenon.

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	1.	Buddha Goes to Bayreuth Part I 23:24		buy track
	2.	Buddha Goes to Bayreuth Part II 43:05		buy track

about

Salzburg Cathedral in Austria has seen a lot in its 1200-year history – bombs, lightning strikes, even the baptism of baby Mozart – but this was probably a first: an ecstatic Buddhist paean drenching the whole reverberant acoustic in harmonic vocal clouds for an hour. The idea for it first came from the young Richard Wagner who thought he might write an opera about the life of Buddha but never got around to it. It took the operatically-inclined Philadelphia composer Robert Moran to try his own take for a 2011 festival. It takes a vast theme and projects it into the even vaster room, where time and space are one; spirit and sound.

Moran’s Buddha goes to Bayreuth is scored for two choirs, two string ensembles, solo countertenor, and very long reverb. Rupert Huber conducts the huge forces from Salzburg and Stuttgart though you’d be hard pressed to deduce any metrical pulse, just timeless soaring melodies and sonorities that wallow around the space as they will. Those ‘echo choruses’ of Purcell and Monteverdi have nothing on this real-life phenomenon.

The sung text is made from fragments of Tibetan mantras, and the composer describes the musical structure:

“I had been given the ancient Book of Changes, the I Ching, by my old friend, John Cage. Sixty-four possible hexagrams are available, and I selected from Acts I and III of PARSIFAL my favorite chords from the orchestral score, reducing each to a simple piano reduction, submitting all of the materials to the I Ching and chance-operations, re-orchestrating each as selected, and for one or the other choruses and/or string groups. The work needed to have a magical quality for me as I have loved PARSIFAL since I was a teenager… Hearing and experiencing Buddha goes to Bayreuth will not suggest specific PARSIFAL chords but a totally new arrangement of sounds.”

The history of music is also the history of the spaces where they happen; they resonate and reinforce each other, creating a unique coupling. Recorded live in 2014, Buddha goes to Bayreuth takes vocal magic to a whole new level. And the universe responds from all directions seconds later.

credits

released March 25, 2021

Stefan Görgner, Countertenor (Part I)
KammerChor KlangsCala Salzburg
Stuttgarter Kammerorchester
Rupert Huber, Conductor

Mastered by Erdem Helvacioglu

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about

Robert Moran Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Robert Moran has traveled many musical paths since 1957 when he began his study of 12-tone music in Vienna with Hans Erich Apostel. He has composed for solo instruments and intimate chamber groups; he has created musical compositions incorporating 100,000 performers, radio and television stations, skyscrapers, and airplanes; and he has collaborated with Phillip Glass to compose opera scores. ... more

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