Canticum Canticorum for Krzysztof Penderecki
A Cappella - Digital Sheet Music

Chamber Orchestra - Level 5 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.1027777

Composed by MohammadHadi Ayanbod. 20th Century,A Cappella,Contemporary,Sacred. Score and parts. 32 pages. Rimorarte Edition #5996921. Published by Rimorarte Edition (A0.1027777).

Canticum Canticorum, for Grand String Orchestra & Mixed Choir, is a musical piece based on the old text with the same name from Vulgate. The Canticum Canticorum text also known as Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon, the Canticle of Canticles, (Old Greek: Άσμα Ασμάτων, same meaning as "song of songs").

As David Berlo once beautifully put this into words: "Meanings are in people … not in the messages …. The elements and structure of a language … are only symbols …. Meanings are not transmittable … Only messages are transmittable, and meanings are not in the message, they are in the message-users!"

Therefore, I needed to understand and interpret the text itself, even before I wanted to try setting it to the music. However, in order to understand the text correctly, one should comprehend the origin of the text and get to know its author(s), at first.

In the case of Canticum Canticorum, both the author and the origin of the text are obscure. Furthermore, even the approximate date/century/era of the birth and the cultural context in which the text was created, are far from clear. According to the scholars, the creation of the text ranges from the tenth century B.C.; the era of Solomon, up to the first century B.C., and the origin of it considers from Indian, Tamil, or Ethiopic literature to Palestinian one. Because of these vast spectra of dates and cultures, I had to read and understand the text, compare with other sources, find similarities in other languages and cultures, hermeneutically interpret it and search for those non-written or metaphorical clues that may lead to unfasten the mystery has been attached to the text.

In order to achieve the most accurate and faithful interpretation of the text I also had to answer few questions regarding the style, structure, medium, architecture and techniques of the music in relation to the text. I have used string orchestra and mixed choir to render the ideas, since that is among highly versatile instrumentations capable of providing small and delicate whispers, heavenly voices, and intonation changes that is hardly-reproducible by other mediums as well as thunderous sounds.

Although Canticum Canticorum is single-movement work, but still possible to distinguish three different sections: the beginning choral part that is a long fugue in 5 voices with the material of serial music which helps orchestra to enter and grow, the a-capella middle section consists of two contrasting but invisibly related atmospheres and the third section – the recapitulation of the ideas already presented, in both the text and the music. The culmination of the work; 11-parts choral, takes place in the third section, somewhere near the end of the piece.

Canticum Canticorum, for Grand String Orchestra & Mixed Choir, is dedicated to the genius composer of our time, Maestro Prof. dr. h.c. Krzysztof Penderecki.