Symphony No. 8
(The Ferryman)

A joyful Himalayan nature poem…

Yes, this can be regarded as a symphony or symphonic poem — both terms are applicable. Let's not get stuck into labels and categorizations, and get into the music itself!

The inner vision that formed this symphony's basis was of a ferryman in a relatively level stretch of one of the Himalayan valleys, surrounded by mountains of breathtaking grandeur. He appears old and simple, but such appearances can be deceptive. Having quietly become enlightened, inwardly he is beyond the passing of time. Free of attachment and desires (which all fight against the reality of 'What Is'), and fully in tune with nature, he sees every object, every person or indeed living thing, as a pure manifestation of consciousness.

All sound — whether it be of human speech, birds singing, rushing water, wind or even thunder or a crashing rockfall — is of the same innermost nature as himself. Even the mountains towering all around are seen as nothing more than transient emanations of the very root essence of consciousness, the extent of which latter cannot be dwarfed even by the whole universe. Yet his unshakable and deeply sourced joyful vibrancy also contains the gentle sadness that is part of his empathy with the countless people and living things who are still in ignorance and suffering.

At the same time, the image of the ferryman is also a metaphor for the genuine promoter of self-actualization / self-realization, who serves as a 'bridge' (okay, a ferry, then! ) and pointer, enabling and empowering people to cross the troubled waters of their own materialistically deluded perceptions towards the recognition and opening up their innermost nature and so finding enlightenment and the joyful freedom of self-actualization.

For the most part the music is gentle and with much repetition of individual elements, which fact will no doubt not be to the taste of some Western classical music listeners. However, this repetition has nothing material in common with the fashionable musical style called minimalism. Here the repetitions are like the bricks that make up a building — except that there is also variation in those repetitions, so that the whole structures that build up have a 'living', organic quality about them, with all changes having an inevitability about them.

As with the 7th Symphony, the main focus of the work is on short, chant or mantra-like melodies, which through repetition (with certain variations) and building up in canonic structures, convey a sense of the great scale and intricacy of Nature itself. A wilder, more 'demonic' variant of one of those passages is like a brief display of illusory manifestations sourced from the garbage, for which, through his (albeit far from full) self-actualization, the ferryman is for practical purposes out of reach — but again it could be seen simply as a passing storm in the 'real' world.

Either way, the ferryman's inner peace remains unsullied, and the music ends in the peaceful simplicity with which it began. The text for the choral parts is the mantra known as the Vajra Guru mantra, om ah hum vajra guru padma siddhi hum, pronounced om ah hung benza guru pema siddhi hung (widely used in Tibetan Buddhism), which is repeatedly repeated.

Since I composed this work I distanced myself totally from Buddhism and indeed all religion and 'spirituality', now seeing these as vehicles of the garbage to turn us away from genuine self-actualization, and I recognise religious chanting or extended repetition of mantras as actually being insidiously and seriously harmful. I therefore seriously recommend nowadays that people who perform or listen to this and other works of mine using mantras set aside from their mind any religious of 'spirituality' connotations of any mantra and regard the mantra repetitions as just being musical building blocks. Then they should be more or less harmless.

Although the Tibetan pronunciation of the mantra is in the score, I now favour a direct non-Tibetan pronunciation of the syllables, in order to minimize the Tibetan Buddhism connection of the work. Nowadays I see Tibetan Buddhism, despite all its positive points, as being a veritable hotbed of dark practice being dished up as something supposedly positive — particularly at the Vajrayana level.

The multitudinous character of certain sections is intentional, and in these I don't expect all details to be noticed in any one performance. By the same token, different performances, with their variations of balance, will inevitably bring out different details in the overall mass of sound. It would be a serious mistake, however, to assume that therefore the work is badly scored, and consequently to produce simplified versions of these passages, for in a simplified and supposedly clearer form they couldn't have the full visionary effect that I intend.

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Related works

• Symphony 7 (Ancient Cry for Freedom)
  

• Symphony 9 (Orb of Life and Death)

• Symphony 10 (Journey of Awakenings, Joys and Sorrows)

• Clarity of a Mountain Sunrise

• Sunrise on Ama Dablam

• Tears of Avalokiteshvara

• Symphonic Ancient Mantra Dances