Australian Composers Orchestral Forum provides emerging composers the opportunity to work with a professional symphony orchestra
ACOF 2003 Participant - David Chisholm
David Chisholm's The Illusion of the End was a composition written for ACOF 2003.
...this piece is an allusion of that kind of illusionary end. An entropic piece that like any closed system of thinking simply dies off, without any real drama, through repetition into pure collapse...
Program Notes - The Illusion of the End
This work takes its title from L’illusion de la fin, Jean Baudrillard's cultural theory text first published in 1992. Baudrillard's remarkable and contentious diagnosis of the attack on reality by all things virtual appears here in translation, appropriately, in reverse. This piece was constructed out of audio samples of the end phrases of each of the five acts of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. I chose that work because of it's approximate synergy to the forces of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. I also chose it because it is the first truly modern opera, a watershed work, and finally because of Debussy's famous quip about Wagner's music being the promise of a dawn that turned out to be a sunset. Building a new work from Debussy's scraps in the audio editing application Protools, I then set about transcribing the virtual work to real orchestra. The piece you hear today represents that experiment. Formally the work is unevenly split into two sections. The first as a relentless driven bass pulse that flips to become a high string pedal pulse that gradually dissolves into nothing. This completes a gift given to me over a decade ago from the outstanding mind of Sue Rowley. It was Sue who imparted to me the idea that apocalypse was the stuff of pure myth. "Civilisations go out with a whimper, not a bang" she said. So this piece is an allusion of that kind of illusionary end. An entropic piece that like any closed system of thinking simply dies off, without any real drama, through repetition into pure collapse.
Thank you: to Karen Burns, Sean Baxter and Lachlan MacDowell for reigniting my brain this year; to Cazerine Barry and Paul Magee for their ongoing belief and support; to John Davis, Meghan FitzGerald at the Australian Music Centre; to Julie Simonds at Symphony Australia for her humour and patience; to Andrew Schultz and Brenton Broadstock for their suggestions; to Simone Young for her generosity and insight; to Miriam Gordon-Stewart for allowing me to write a work without her voice in it. Of course thanks to all at TSO and as always to my Matthew and my Zosia and Jean-Louis, and my Kirsten and Marion. And finally to Liz Millar, to whom this piece is inscribed, for her open ears and open heart.
Composition Diary Entries
Composition Diary - April 2003
