Oblivion
A wandering music in an uprooted universe
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Recording
Summary
Oblivion is a choreographic miniature for clarinet, piano and percussion built as a music of wandering through incompatible stylistic and spiritual territories. Swinging between derisory surface pleasures and the unfulfilled search for an original meaning, the piece stages a restless world in which no stable way out seems available.
Imprint
| Orchestration | Clarinet, Piano and Percussion (one player) / |
|---|---|
| Lyrics | — |
| Duration | 10′ |
| State | Finished |
| Completed | 2015 |
| Premiered | 2015, During the Chei Festival held by UNMB |
| Performed by | — |
| Honors | Third Prize at the Ștefan Niculescu Music Composition Contest held by UNMB in 2015; Acquired by UCMR (2015) |
| Copyright | Claudius Iacob |
Program notes
Oblivion, Self-forgetfulness, is a music of wandering, itself wandering through a confused and uprooted universe. A sonic world oscillating without clear purpose between pre-Wagnerian and post-Schoenbergian idioms. It seems populated by beings lacking the ability or courage to recover and assume an original meaning. This world drifts among ethereal sonorities tinged with Gregorian chant, among Bartok-like barbarisms, among more or less derisory piano-cafe musics, sugary romantic passions and their like. What we hear is now a futile search for a long-lost and long-forgotten something, now a stubborn entrenchment in various opiate substitutes. Anamnesis, or salvific recovery, consistently refuses itself to the seeker, leaving him consumed by a certain impossible-to-quench thirst, and one very difficult to deceive.
On the extra-musical plane, the above admits multiple equivalences. The Christian theologian might recognize here fallen man, wandering in search of the lost paradisal state: lacking the power or courage to follow the path of salvation proposed by Christ, he seeks, in vain, consolation in various material vices or pleasures. Likewise, the art historian or musicologist might observe the struggles of the creative artist, perpetually in search of an ultimate meaning of art, perpetually hunted by failure and by the temptation of imposture. The anthropologist or sociologist might find a parallel with humanity’s millennial attempts to conceive and fashion the perfect society, and with its equally millennial failures — and so on.