Garden of Earthly Desire

Liza LIM
Born 1966, Perth, Australia

Garden of Earthly Desire (1988-89)

flute, oboe, clarinet, electric guitar, mandolin, harp, violin, viola, violoncello, contrabass, percussion
Commissioned by ELISION Ensemble with the assistance of the Australia Council
Published by Ricordi, catalogue 135541

I began writing Garden of Earthly Desire with the idea of narrating simultaneously many different (musical) stories on many levels. My primary inspiration came from Italo CALVINO's Castle of Crossed Destinies in which sequences of fables arise from the interpretation of arrangements of tarot cards. The stories thrown up by this process intersect and illuminate each other with a multiformity of meanings that Calvino `reads´ from the cards, embedded as they are with memories, centuries-old of Western culture.

This kaleidescopic patterning of meanings finds accord with my recent aesthetic preoccupations with fragmented, exploded structures that I term `debris´ forms. Central to this area of exploration lies a belief in a hypothetical `wholeness´ of an idea -- the idea that is the underlying principle of the music -- that presents itself, coalesced into a momentary flash of consciousness, in the precompositional stage. In the process of trying to realize this idea however, it becomes splintered and fragmented in a field of technical considerations -- strategies, games, filters -- that is, different readings of possible meanings of the idea. The piece of music therefore is not so much a completed `art-object´ as the resultant `bloody traceries´ of layers of interpretation.

The work offers no `neat´ final solution but rather, seeks to present a complex flux of expression in time -- a celebration of the multiplicity and richness of the life in and around us. Hence the appeal of the tarot — the characters of these archetypal figures find musical analogies in the work. There is the Juggler -- the alchemical, mercurial figure engaging in a dialectic of extremes; the High Priestess -- totem of initiation and the gathering of energizing forces; the Empress -- fecund, pagan, teeming with life  . . . 

The work's connection with the fifteenth century Flemish painter, Hieronymous Bosch and his tryptich Garden of Earthly Delights was arrived at when I had already completed a substantial part of the work. I saw remarkable correspondences between various aspects of the Bosch -- its tripartite structure; the surrealistic richness of the moods explored in the panels; the detailed fantasy figures -- and the characters of the different strands of my music that I had organised into a 3 Ã— 3 Ã— 3 cycle of sections.

The work is dedicated to Daryl BUCKLEY.

Programme note © 1989 Liza LIM