Alexander Goehr: Tower Music
Turmmusik (Tower Music) for two clarinets, brass and strings with baritone solo, Op. 85
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by H. K. Gruber, Nigel Robson, baritone.
Texts by Franz Kafka, Jacob Boehme, Friedrich Durrenmatt, and from the Bible.
Painting is the Tower of Babel by an unknown, 16th Century Flemish painter.
I Inscription of Nebukadnezzar II on the great stone tablets
II Fr. Kafka: The City Coat-of-Arms
III Jakob Boehme, Mysterium magnum
IV Fr. Dürrenmatt, Towerbuilding
V Fr. Kafka: The City Coat-of-Arms (continued)
VI Choral Prelude II
VII Isaiah 14. 13-14
The composer writes ‘Towers embody the idea of climbing upwards, in the spiritual as much as in the physical sense. Their destruction can be regarded as a punishment (or as a rescue from) man’s overwhelming arrogance.’
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