Clarity Of a Mountain Sunrise
Originally titled: Meditation on the Clear Light
for two 4-part choirs and orchestra
Listen on YouTube…
A sense of mystery and wonder, emphasized by a hushed understatement…
This is a work of uncompromising rarefaction — as befits the peace and 'just being' of contemplating the silent splendour of a mountain sunrise. It's so terse that I strongly recommend that newcomers to the work listen to it twice in the first sitting. Also, its full effect won't be achieved if it's listened to close to other works. Ideally there would be at least 10 minutes clear of other music before this work and at least an hour afterwards. This may seem unrealistic, but nonetheless I joke not.
This composition really works in two ways. It's the nature poem that is indicated in its title, but it's also a setting of esoteric Buddhist texts about the innermost level of consciousness (fundamental consciousness), the direct recognition of which by oneself as the true 'I' or 'me' marks the crossing of the threshold of what is usually called enlightenment, but what I nowadays would prefer to describe as the gaining of fundamental clarity.
I'd originally thought of this work as strongly Buddhism-connected, and then gave it the title Meditation on the Clear Light.
The words of this work had to be adapted somewhat in order to impart the necessary rhythmic inflections to what, in their English translations, proved too lacking in rhythm for me to use. To the average Western person the texts of this work will seem to be total gobbledygook, but I can report from my own experience of recognition of the innermost aspect of consciousness as the true nature of oneself and of everything (which is what enlightenment really is), that the texts, although a bit convoluted, do a quite good job in conveying something of what, although it can be experienced directly, is in fact beyond all concepts and thus beyond any possibility of direct and accurate description.
One problem about the texts that I've used is the calling of that deepest aspect of consciousness the Clear Light and indeed the Ground Luminosity*. That is a distortion contained in the Buddhist teachings, which is sourced from the garbage for a highly pernicious purpose. One thing that consciousness (any aspect of it) is not is light or luminosity. It is awareness and clarity. It can experience 'light', but it itself isn't light.
* The use of the term 'Rigpa' for it, however, doesn't appear to be problematical, except to anyone to whom it might effectively mean 'light' or 'luminosity' — and with the caveat that it is problematical when capitalized, because that's effectively sanctifying the concept of 'rigpa'.
Samsara, referred to in the text, is the term used by Buddhists to cover all the purported realms of cyclic rebirth and suffering. In their teachings physical existence as humans represents but one of those realms. I nowadays distance myself from Buddhism and its teachings, for, as in other religions, various seriously harmful distortions had been perpetuated for the purpose of maintaining control over people rather than giving them the most self-empowering truths, and the concept of samsara is hopelessly confused in a way that must have led countless trusting Buddhist practitioners unwittingly into the insidious clutches of the garbage because of illusory realities that they'd unawarely created with their beliefs about the nature of reality.
The term 'buddhahood', in the particular context, really is supposed to mean 'full enlightenment', which in my parlance would be 'full self-actualization'. However, the Buddhist understanding of that state of supposed completion is incomplete and unbalanced, being based primarily on the actually very harmful and unbalancing effects of the use of extensive meditation.
The final (Tibetan) exclamation in the work — 'Emaho!' — means approximately 'How wonderful!'.
In Clarity of a Mountain Sunrise there is no earthly emotion — just a rapt absorption and sense of mystery and wonder, emphasized by a hushed understatement, which is somewhat reminiscent of Stravinsky's Le Roi des étoiles, though the idiom is different, and that work's vision, although thrillingly beautiful, is more in the arena of 'dark' occultism than the very positive direction in which this work is pointing.
There's no fast music, and the dynamics remain mostly level and quiet apart from a few coloristic effects. The scoring is very sparing. For example the choir is a double one for antiphonal effects only, not for elaborate textures nor massive sound, and the trumpeters — three of them — have only five notes to play, albeit telling ones, and the orchestra lacks trombones and tuba.
However, full string sections playing very quietly are preferred to having smaller string sections playing less quietly, to achieve the most spacious and detached sound; any vibrato of individual players is best not heard, for 'sweetness' of sound is quite out of place here.
After an austere introduction, the backbone of the main part of the work is nothing more than two very slow but gradually accelerating ever-ascending chromatic scales a minor third apart and effectively in close canon. Both of these are harmonized a minor third below but in lower octaves. Against this continual spacious shifting between consonance and dissonance, sections of the choir weave austere fragments of mostly unharmonized chant-like melody, punctuated by the refrain 'How amazing!' in modal three-part harmony, usually with strange woodwind sonorities (equivalent to use of mutation stops on an organ), using variants of a motif used in my 6th Symphony.
The nature of all is open, empty,
naked like the sky.
Luminous emptiness, without centre or boundary: the pure, naked Rigpa dawns.
(adapted from The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
referring to the dawning of the so-called 'ground luminosity' during the death process)
(these 2 lines are repeated, in canon)
This Clear Light, spontaneously
present, from the beginning never born,
Is the child of Rigpa, itself without parents — how amazing!
This pure wisdom, source of its own origin, by no-one created — how amazing!
Unborn and holding no seed of death — how amazing!
Evidently visible, it has no-one to see it — how amazing!
Having wandered through countless lives in samsara, it has come to no harm — how amazing!
Having seen buddhahood itself, nought has it gained — how amazing!
Existing in everyone everywhere, unrecognised is it still — how amazing!
And yet still you hope to attain some other fruit than this — how amazing!
Even though it's the thing most essentially yours, you seek for it elsewhere — how amazing!
This Clear Light, spontaneously
present, from the beginning never born,
Is the child of Rigpa, itself without parents — how amazing!
(The above 10 lines are words of Padmasambhava)
I am, yet there is no 'I' to behold — how amazing!
(added by the Composer)
from the beginning never born —
How amazing! Emaho!
(these 3 lines sung simultaneously)
Related works
Obtain Scores from the Publisher…
| Meditation
on the Clear Light By Philip GODDARD. For Double Choir (SSAATTBB) and
Orchestra (Score). Published by Musik Fabrik. (mfpg015ss) See more info… |
|
| Meditation
on the Clear Light By Philip GODDARD. For double choir (SSAATTBB) and
orchestra. Vocal score, with piano reduction. Published by Musik Fabrik (French
import). (mfpg015vs) See more info… |