ET IN ARCADIA EGO

The plainsong Dies irae chant was the initial idea which came to me and developed into this work. The very nature of the chant, rather than anything that I might seek to express, determined the mood of the piece, which has a certain sombreness and may seem to a casual listener to be sad and elegiac. I freely admit that my memory of the chant was in fact its rendering in Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. Whether I've reproduced even that correctly isn't of consequence, however. I roughly transcribed the original plainsong chant from a recording of a plainsong requiem mass, but found that it was less amenable to my particular treatment than was the 'recollected Berlioz' version, which thus continued to form the main basis of the work, though sometimes with transient reversions to the original plainsong in the odd small detail.

When I started the composition I was reading the book The Tomb of God by Richard Andrews & Paul Schellenberger, which presented apparently strong evidence for the existence of a tomb containing Jesus' earthly remains in a mountainside near Rennes-le-Château in southern France. I was aware of a different and to me more persuasive set of evidence pointing to Jesus' final tomb being in Kashmir, but in the absence of any clear authority on the matter I felt that it was appropriate for artistic purposes for me to address the former scenario too. None of us can absolutely know what the actual historical truth was, for the only way to find out for sure now would be to go back in time to there and see for ourselves what happened for Jesus. No channelled 'information' on the subject (or indeed any subject) is reliable, either, so there is no point in turning to such sources. (See Better Without Channelling.)

The important point that I had originally meant to emphasise in this work was that Jesus survived the crucifixion and was teaching basic spirituality rather than what we know as Christianity today (indeed, by definition he couldn't have been a Christian), and important spiritual aspects of his teachings, such as enlightenment, individual responsibility and reincarnation, were subsequently suppressed by the religious authorities. However, regardless of any viewpoint of mine, my musical works are not meant to be acts of preaching, but of presenting scenarios which can be powerful experiences without the need to believe anything - just as some Roman Catholic Mass settings are powerful works for myself and many other people who reject the whole Christianity belief system.  My works should thus be experienced with open minds, not partisan attitudes either for or against particular scenarios.

Et in Arcadia Ego is contemplative in character, with only a little brief overt drama. For much of the time the chant melody proceeds with no significant tempo variation at a gentle 80 beats per minute. To me, the work is several things. It's a contemplation on death and the impermanence of everything. It's also a contemplation on the alleged tomb on the flank of Mont Cardou in southern France, which has been at the centre of so much mystery and confusion. And it's a contemplation on the simple truths of basic spirituality that Jesus, like many other teachers, brought for the benefit of Humanity - in the context of the repressive might over the centuries of the Roman Catholic Church, with its different, non-mystical teachings, which were more about power heirarchies and control.

After the opening exposition of the original plainsong Dies irae up to 'Judicanti responsura', the music consists of a series of canonic renderings, with some variation, of my altered version of the chant, separated by interludes, which latter are either homophonic chordal renderings of the chant, or different material. In fact, despite the apparent sombreness and elegiac character of the work, those who listen more deeply will find that it is not a sad work at all; it comes from a spiritual dimension that transcends all mundane emotions. Upon contemplating death and impermanence the really wise person feels a rapt inner peace and joy, mingled with a limitless compassion for all beings, rather than the various negative emotions that our worldly cultures expect of us.

At one point quite early in the work, sandwiched between stormy renderings of the Dies irae chant, emerges a setting of J.S. Bach's Passion Chorale, which in this canonic form, full of clashes between the choral parts, has a timeless and blissful quality imbued with a transcendent all-embracing compassion, rather than the original more earthly sadness and pity. This chorale then is worked together with the chant before the second stormy outburst of the latter. Apart from my variations of that chant and the brief appearance of the Passion Chorale, there is only one other melody -- an original one exotically harmonized in parallel minor chords, which is used in three of the interludes. On its first and second appearances the vibraphone picks out the notes of the first full phrase of the Dies irae chant out of the new melody and its harmonization.

The final rendering of the chant in the work, in a chordally harmonized canonic form, is like a great procession of the Enlightened Ones, radiating the conviction of the ultimate truth that transcends all concepts and worldly delusion and deceptions.

The words are taken from several sources, and three languages are represented. Apart from the cipher texts and ironic use of the Dies Irae text from the Latin Requiem Mass at the beginning and in two stormy passages a little later, all the texts are used to focus on teachings of Jesus that were excluded from or misrepresented in the New Testament. In particular we have teachings of Jesus on reincarnation and looking within oneself for salvation. The only straight Biblical quote is a remarkable mistranslation, which is followed by a more correct translation. The French texts are ciphers (or parts thereof) which, according to Andrews and Schellenberger, were part of the means by which the secret of the alleged final tomb of Jesus was preserved and passed on through the centuries.

The motto et in Arcadia ego had been used in various paintings and documents in earlier centuries to help draw the attention of cognoscenti to works in which certain geometric constructions had been encrypted, which, it is claimed, were effectively maps showing the location of the site on Mont Cardou where the Great Secret of the Knights Templar was allegedly buried - which had generally (outside the Knights Templar) but wrongly been assumed to be Jesus. "et in Arcadia ego" is actually an incomplete Latin sentence, because it lacks a verb. It should really read "et in Arcadia ego sum", which means "And I am in Paradise". What Jesus was actually teaching was that 'paradise' is already here, deep within us - not somewhere outside or beyond.

Words sung by the choir

(Words in square brackets are my own alterations or insertions.)

1. Opening chant: basses

2. Altos

3. Basses

4. Tutti (stormy)

5. Tutti (in canon -- Bach's Passion Chorale tune)

6. Tutti (simultaneous themes)

7. Tutti (stormy)

8. Tutti (canon)

9. Women

10. Tutti (canon)

11. Women, with wrathful interjections from men

12. Women

13. Men & Altos

14. Tutti (canon)

15. Women

16. Women & Tenors

17. Basses (return of first part of opening chant)

18. Tutti

19. Men -Women (dialogue)

20. Tutti (multitudinous canon)

21. Final tutti (canon, quasi processional)