Title

Vac

Year

1995

Instrumentation

for cl, vln, vlc, pno, & contralto voice

Notes

Commissioned by the Ensemble Bartók of Santiago. Ancient Eastern traditions considered the female voice a mysterious and powerful symbol of creation. To the Vedic sages, she was Vac — literally the sound of the voice. The contralto sings a kind of meta-language based at first only on consonant and vowel sounds of speech. In a process which reflects both joy and pain, she slowly forms the word which must be the first principle of creation, the word which, as Dante observed, "moves the sun and the other stars": Love.

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