Revelations
by Anthony Ritchie, for orchestra, Opus 82
Inspired by a near-death experience, this tone-poem is full of colourful musical images and sharp contrasts of mood. It is sharp-edged in tone and challenging in performance.
- YEAR: 1998
- DURATION: 12'00
- COMMISSIONED BY: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
- INSTRUMENTATION: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B flat (2nd doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in B flat, 2 tenor trombones, 1 bass trombone, 1 tuba timpani, 2 percussionists (playing tam tam, bass drum, triangle, large suspended cymbal, crash cymbals, log drum, xylophone, 4 tom toms, celesta.) harp and strings. Note: This score is notated in C
- LEVEL: 4 | Challenging for professional musicians
The full score is published by Promethean Editions
Programme Note
What happens to us after we die? This fundamental question has haunted human imagination for thousands of years. Many recorded accounts of 'near-death' experiences from all over the world provide evidence that human consiousness remains active in the time immediately following death. These independent accounts describe similar events: the person (or 'spirit') floating above their dead body, the appearance of a great light, being told to go back, and so on.
In 1959, Gina Baxter-Leipolot underwent an emergency operation, was in a coma for three days, and was not expected to recover. During this time she had a 'near-death' experience in which she was drifting above a Mediterranean coastline. She heard music, such as the "velvet sound of of violins, underbroken by a sound like mandolins" and "a humming sound, building up in force like thunder". Gina remembered the music after she recovered from the coma and twelve years later she wrote the music down in a basic form, with the help of a retired music examiner, John Chew. She called the music 'Revelations'.
Having been stirred by Gina's story and other 'near-death' accounts, I decided to base my orchestral piece loosely on 'Revelations'. Gina's music only appears in the coda of the piece, played on celesta and harp. It is fragmented and interspersed between large orchestral gestures that depict shafts of light.
Revelations begins with human suffering, symbolised by an anguished chromatic motif on the violins. This is joined by ascending brass chords counterpointed against descending wind chords, as the 'spirit' floats out of the body. With the entry of the harp the music becomes ethereal, and the flute plays a sinuous, floating melody. A sinister idea is heard on low clarinets, based on the ascending chords. Following development of these ideas it is the piccolo's turn to play above the harp, as the 'spirit' floats even higher over the sea (symbolised by a static chord, C-D-E). The music gathers in intensity and at the stroke of a log drum the strings play a fast and dynamic fugato. This section is turbulent and spiralling, and uses elements from the slow section: the piccolo theme, the low clarinet idea, acsending and descending chords, and thick 'cluster' chords. Resolution is only found at the start of the coda, where the strings play the static chord C-D-E, and the brass and winds play joyful versions of earlier motifs. Gina's music then appears, and the piece is rounded off by a blaze of light. To quote Gina: "Don't be afraid of death."