Song Of A Traveller In The Night

A Tribute to Bill Viola for Clarinet and String Quartet

Notes by Isidora Žebeljan

At the world premiere of Song of a Traveller in the Night, performed at the National Gallery in London on 23 October 2003, the composer was present. She had worked with her five musicians to finalize the piece. Before the piece was played, she was asked to address the audience of about 150 people who had gathered for this event. The text of what she said follows:

When I started to write this music my idea was to find out the basic and the deepest elements that have made Bill Viola's work so exquisite and beautiful and to try to express them through music.

In his work, gesticulations and facial expressions that communicate human emotion are slowed down to enable us to follow the myriad changes within a developing emotional state. The state he studies or portrays is also gradually being transformed as well as being travelled through before our eyes. It means that there isn't a single movement or moment that is identically repeated. It is all about transformation.

In music, this means that repetition is reduced, existing only as a bond with or into the next part of the music. This repetition comes from the very nature of music. Every micro-state of music is innovative, is new, but it naturally adds up to the previous one, builds upon or develops from the previous one, thus creating the impression that, organically, the different cells of music originate from each other and are linked.

All of the musical materials of this piece contain the fragments of the same idea, that is, of the emotional state from which everything has originated.

Also crucial to music and to Bill Viola's art is the existence of an element of surprise. It is for this reason that the basic musical idea twists and turns into a different, unexpected image of itself, as in the most beautiful moments of Bill Viola's works.

In the music everything is focused on a melody for it is a musical form of a human figure, and this human figure - the human figure generically, but also the specific and individual figure - is at the centre of Bill Viola's interest.

There is also an archaic tone in the music reminiscent of the Renaissance and baroque worlds - just as Viola's work itself refers to the old masters. But here, in the music, it is a whole new vision that does not rely on what I call the "motority" or propelled movement of baroque music (as is usually the case with works of minimalists). Archaic sound is incarnated in two-parts, namely the bare essence of the sole musical idea and its emotional state. The sound has a mark of something so ancient that it can also be easily recognised as a part of something to come in future.

The basic stance of this composition is in two-parts, which is related to a dyptich - a form often encountered in Viola's works.

Another point I would like to emphasize is that the musical phrasing has come entirely from the manner of singing. It marks the moment in which the human element becomes present, makes itself felt, in endless space.

Finally, the key word for this music is journey. It is a song of a traveller, someone who is travelling without changing places, without feet. It is a song of a soul wandering on its journey, passing through various landscapes of emotion or event; the song of a traveller also journeying through and exploring a vast area of inner space.

The music is even the mystery of a man singing as he gazes at an amazing star somewhere over Bethlehem during a still night.