Pranayama

SKU: PR.446413360

UPC: 680160667321. 9 x 12 inches.

Pranayama is a musical meditation for both orchestra and audience, intended for the opening of a concert program. The three pitches that are the basis of the entire work were first heard by me as music floating in the ether. These pitches are passed from one instrument to another in the orchestra and transposed. Their rhythm is based solely on the timing of the breath of each individual player. The first two notes are played as the string players and percussionists exhale, while the third note is played on the inhale. Wind and brass players divide the three notes between each pair, one player taking the first two notes and then cuing the other player for the third note, and so on in a cycle. The overall result might sound like a community of living, breathing organisms. It may require some patience to get used to the aural subtleties and nuance of detail over time, just like being in a very dark room and waiting for your eyes to adjust to see what is there. These words of the early French philosopher, Nicolas Malebranche supply an epigraph for the piece: Attention is the natural prayer of the soul. Pranayama was completed in 2015 and is an expansion of one of the movements of an earlier work, Twilight Streams for cello and guitar. It is dedicated to Paul Haas, who imaginatively suggested the idea of rewriting if for orchestra and who premiered the work with the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas.

David Leisner