Per Nørgård – Iris, from Iris/Voyage into the Golden Screen.
______
Voyage into the Golden Screen
for chamber orchestra
By Erling Kullberg
Composed1968-69
First performance 1969 with Collegium Musicum, Copenhagen, conducted by Lavard Friisholm
Length 16 min.
The infinity series in a pure form
In Voyage we experience for the first time the melodic infinity series in a pure form, without camouflage or ornamentation. Apart from a short introduction, the second movement plays a straightforward, ‘objective’ version of the infinity series with a view to revealing the potential for musical experience concealed in it.
Having worked on the development of the infinity series for several years, Per Nørgård had become increasingly convinced of the strange and wonderful properties of the series, not only in terms of structure, but also as an aesthetic phenomenon to be experienced as such. It is this recognition that is laid bare to us in Voyage.
Psychedelic
One of the most characteristic aspects of the late sixties era was an interest in all things psychedelic, aiming at an expansion of consciousness and focusing on inner states. This is clearly expressed in beat and rock music – with or without the aid of drugs – and it is also expressed in Per Nørgård’s music of this period.
Many of the titles of his works contain words hinting at journeys or explorations:
Grooving (for piano)
Anatomisk Safari (Anatomical Safari) (for accordion)
Rejser (Journeys) (for piano)
Inscape and Dreamscape (for string quartet)
Waves (for percussion)
The Danish traveller, Ebbe Kløvedal Reich, has written as follows about this need to look down and in at the details of things and up and out over the horizon:
What does it mean, to put one’s inner phenomena in order?
– It means allowing oneself to be convinced by a model of the Universe which apparently can house most of one’s impressions and thoughts in thoroughly structured parallel worlds, so that one no longer needs to worry about whether one’s images belong in this world or that, and at the same time is so constructed that one is always able to see them and their position in the whole.
from: Svampens Tid (The Age of the Mushroom), 1969.
The title
Voyage into the golden screen borrowed its title from a song by Donovan, whose psychedelic, almost Art Nouveau imagery, fits in very well with the mood content of the work. Per Nørgård has used the rainbow as a leitmotif for the work: the rainbow is a colour spectrum, a natural phenomenon, and is experienced by every observer from where he or she is standing.
Originally, the work bore the sub-title: Two Studies in Perception. The 1st. movement burrows into the tonal world of the micro interval, whilst the 2nd. movement points outwards to eternity.
The author, Jørgen I. Jensen, has characterised the relationship between the two movements as a relationship between intuition and consciencisation.
1st. movement
2nd. movement
THE BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC 