Selig Licht

Selig Licht, or “saving light” in German, borrows its underlying structural harmonic language from J.S. Bach’s chorale Mit Fried’ und Freud’ ich fahr’ dahin, BWV 83. The “saving light” of this two-section work is represented by the zarb, a single-headed goblet drum from Iran that produces a wide range of frequencies, just as light itself does. In the first section, the zarb’s rhythmic patterns mark each successive harmonic iteration from the Bach chorale. The chorale itself is represented by held instrumental and vocal pitches from the violin, cello, piano, and zarb players. The flute and clarinet, supported by the strings, “respond” to each presentation of these chords with microtonally-inflected “shadows” that are influenced by both the melodic framework of the maqamat and just intonation. These “choral chords” gradually accelerate throughout this section, all controlled by the zarb’s perspective of temporality. By the end of the first section, the tempo has accelerated to the point where the zarb “breaks free” of the structural rigidity imposed from the chorale. It becomes the maqsum, a common rhythmic cycle heard in traditional Arab music that consists of a series of low “dums” and “teks” in 4/4 time. In the second section, this maqsum presides over the ensemble, which re-starts the chords from the same Bach chorale, now heard in a new context. Here, the piano “holds” all the original pitches from the chorale, while the rest of the ensemble plays the related pitch spectra from the chords’ overtone series.