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Ritual and Memory Materials

R&M CoverThe Ritual and Memory web site contains supporting material for the triple-disc music/video collection by Stephen Pope, released in May 2007 by the Electronic Music Foundation (EMF CD 068).

You can purchase the set on-line here for immediate down-load or postal delivery; for alternative sources, see EMF Media or Amazon.com.

The Ritual and Memory Package

The Ritual and Memory Web Site

Ritual and Memory Multi-part Media Experience Contents

CD 1: Five Ritual Places - 5 pieces, 19 tracks, 64:00 minutes

CD 2: Dunkelkammergespräche - 3 pieces, 22 tracks, 60:30 minutes

DVD: Video Collaborations - 4 pieces, 75:00 minutes

Go To the Ritual and Memory Site

Jerusalem's Secrets

Music in 5 movements for samples from "Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae" and
"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" - Stephen Travis Pope, 19:40 minutes, 2006

The movements

Introduction (De Lamentatione Jeremiae Prophetae) -- 0:56
Part1 (Jerusalem) -- 4:02
Part2 (Recordare, Domine) -- 5:20
Part3 (Plorans ploravit in nocte, et lacrimae ejus in maxillis ejus) -- 4:18
Part4 (Convertere ad Dominum, Deum tuum) -- 4:42

Program notes

JS CoverFor many years I've wanted to make a tape-based "musique concrete" style composition using Latin chant from Ernst Krenek's 1941/2 choral piece "Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae" (The Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremias) together with source samples from the 1981 album "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" by Brian Eno and David Byrne. This became possible with the release under a liberal copyright of the original source tracks of the songs "Help Me Somebody" and "A Secret Life" from "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts."  Each of the five movements of "Jerusalem's Secrets" presents a short phrase from "Lamentatio" over a backdrop of percussion textures, synthesizer drones and pedal tones. All of the sounds in "Jerusalem's Secrets" come from these sources, which were processed in the simplest ways (splicing, pitch shifting, time stretching, looping, etc.) and layered to make the composition in the style of tape-based "musique concrete." This music is intended for multimedia accompaniment (dance or video).
  • Down-load ZIP file of the MP3s of Jerusalem's Secrets

    The Texts

    Introduction
        "De Lamentatione Jeremiae Prophetae"
        (This is from the lamentations of the prophet Jeremias.)

    Part 1
        "Help me somebody"
        "Jerusalem" (4 times)
        "It's not the big things; it's the small things."
        Lebanese popular song: "We traveled on the roads of passion." (4 times)
        "There's no escape from it."

    Part 2
        "Recordare, Domine."
        (Remember, Lord.)
        I know

    Part 3
        "Plorans ploravit in nocte, et lacrimae ejus in maxillis ejus"
        (Weeping, she wept in the night, and her tears ran down her cheeks."
        Lebanese popular song: "We traveled on the roads of passion, collecting our wounds"
     
    Part 4
        "Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum, Deum tuum."
        (Jerusalem, turn back to the Lord your God.)
        Lebanese popular song:  "...stopping at the stops of love, brief stops..."
        "You need to take a good look at yourself and see if you're the kind of person
            that God wants you to be."

    Ora penso invece che il mondo...

    Three Quick Snapshots of a Really Beautiful Enigma
    for String Quartet and Two Pianos
    Stephen Travis Pope, 10:00 minutes, 2006

    Full title: "Ora penso invece che il mondo sia un enigma benigno, che la nostra follia rende terribile perchè pretende di interpretarlo secondo la propria verità."OP CD Label

    "Today, however, I think that the world is an enigma, a benign enigma, however, which is only rendered terrible by our folly of trying to interpret it according to some personal truth."

    "Heute aber, denke ich, dass die Welt ein Rätsel ist, ein harmloses Rätsel aber, das nur furchtbar gemacht wird durch unseren Versuch, es nach einer eigenen Wahrheit zu interpretieren."

    Umberto Eco, "Il pendolo di Foucault" (Foucault's Pendulum)

    Sections

    Andante con brio - 4:26
    Larghetto, cantabile - 2:42
    Andante molto - 2:42

    Program Notes

    When I was invited to write a piece for string quartet and electronics for a festival in Cologne marking the 50th anniversary of the first computer-composed music (a string quartet), the title of this piece, and its basic form, sprang immediately to mind. This is very rare for me. During the composition, I used the title to steer my decisions, and, as a result, what started out to be a complex and dynamic piece became ever simpler and more directly lovely. As I repeated "Ora penso invece che il mondo..." it came strongly into focus that the world-enigma in which we live is quite beautiful and accessible, even if we can't always understand its underlying mechanisms. This is the basis of the subtitle "Three Quick Snapshots of a Really Beautiful Enigma"; the piece's three movements are separate scenes or venues taking place at the same time all the time.

    Ora penso invece che il mondo... is dedicated to my parents Phil and Polly Pope (who taught me to see the world in many different ways), and to my dear wife Barbara.

    The piece opens with three episodes of minimalist rhythmic patterns that are deconstructed, leading to a bridge to the slow movement, a very beautiful song. The final movement opens with a contrapuntal development, but the players quickly decide to forego this and return to playing a variation of the slow pretty song.

    The piece was premiered by the Minguet string quartet (with the piano parts played from CD) in Cologne, Germany in November 2006; the reference recording was produced with sampling software using the Vienna Symphonic instrument library.

    Ora penso invece che il mondo... is the final part of a larger piece, The Periodic Table of the Elements (Secrets, Dreams, Faith, and Wonder), whose four parts are,

    Ora penso Downloads

    Video Release of Leur Songe de la Paix

    Leur Songe de la Paix: music video by R. Lane Clark and Stephen T. Pope LSdlP Cover

    Press Release (January, 2006, 2 pages)

    Leur Songe de la Paix, music video by R. Lane Clark and Stephen Travis Pope released by HeavenEverywhere

    Leur Songe de la Paix (Their Dream of Peace) -- DVD music video by R. Lane Clark (images) and Stephen Travis Pope (music) based on a text by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- 13:00 minutes

    Production by HeavenEverywhere, Santa Barbara -- 2002-05.

    Distributed by the Gandhi & King Season for Nonviolence and the Association for Global New Thought.

    Available through the King Center Bookstore, Atlanta.

    The 13-minute music video Leur Songe de la Paix (Their Dream of Peace) combines R. Lane Clark's riveting abstract images with computer-processed voices and instruments by composer Stephen Travis Pope, and the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. The motivation behind the piece is to provide the simplest possible setting for several excerpts from Dr. King's famous “A Time to Break the Silence” speech, delivered in New York exactly one year before his assassination. The images were painted directly on 35mm slides using a sgraffito-like technique to remove layers of the photo emulsion, and then scanned into a computer and composed into the video collage. The music is in three movements (fast/slow/fast) for voices, bells, analog synthesizer, orchestral samples, and Morse-code program.

    Included on the DVD are materials for local organizers from the annual Gandhi & King Season for Nonviolence.

    The DVD has been distributed by the Association for Global New Thought, an inter-faith coalition of 800 churches, and was widely played nation-wide at events related to the Martin Luther King day of commemoration in January, 2006.

    Leur Songe links:
        Association for Global New Thought:   http://www.agnt.org
        HeavenEverywhere:   http://www. HeavenEverywhere.com

    Links


    About the HeavenEverywhere logo

    HE1I LogoThe image of "the man in the maze" is common to many of the native Americans of the south-west US. I interpret it as meaning that we are all very close to our goals as human/spirit beings, and that the labyrinth consists of our learning what our role or context is, what our relationship is to our surroundings. The added "1 I" is borrowed from a Bob Marley song and is an allusion to the concept of a collective soul, or what some call "the universal I am".

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    Email:  info -at- HeavenEverywhere -dot- com