The Alchemical Wedding

Liza LIM
Born 1966, Perth, Australia

The Alchemical Wedding (1996)

flute/piccolo I, flute/piccolo II, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet in Eb, clarinet in Bb, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon/contrabassoon, horn, trumpet I, trumpet II, trombone, angklung/percussion, percussion, er-hu (Chinese violin), violin I, violin II, violoncello I, violoncello II, violoncello III, contrabass
Commissioned by ELISION Ensemble and Ensemble Modern
Published by Ricordi, catalogue 137517

The Alchemical Wedding was a joint commission by ELISION and Ensemble Modern. On one level, the work is a marriage of the musical possibilities suggested by the two ensembles which bring together instruments of Asia lineage such as the Chinese er-hu and Indonesian angklung, with instruments from a Western tradition.

The composition of the work evolved through a process of listening for point of contact between seemingly disparate musical entities. It begins from an assumption of the longing of these entities to come into union. As such, it can be heard as an allegory for the transformaive mystery of divine love that speaks through the poetry of the 13th Century Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi.

They're lovers again: Sugar dissolving into milk.
Day and night, no difference. The sun is the moon:
An amalgam. Their gold and silver melt together.
This is the season when the dead branch and the green
branch are the same branch.

You must marry your soul.
That wedding is the way.

Rumi's poetry often draws upon the image of musical instruments in metaphors of the spirit speaking through human beings. As translators Coleman Barks and John Moyne say, Rumi's work "describes a fluctuating music and presence and absence  . . .  occasional ecstasy, continuous wonderment and longing, disconnections, union".

God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.
Each note if a need coming through one of us,
a passion, a longing pain.

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing  . . . 

The music of The Alchemical Wedding focusses on a process of continual transformation. Onto the initial vibrating line made by the giant reed of the contrabassoon, other musics are woven, to be dissolved and then reformed again. The lower instruments evolve the `spine´ of the work from which `wings´ of different transparency and density billow. The energy of the msuic is wave-like, cresting, dispersing, gathering so that even in its final moments, there is a singing that continues into the silence.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the centre of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)

Programme note © Liza LIM

First performance was at the Melbourne Festival, 30 October 1996, by ELISION and Ensemble Modern, Dominique MY conductor.