Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)
2018 - 2022
Employing a monochromatic compositional basis, Verklärte Nacht (or Transfigured Night) continues the visual renditions of earlier series. Utilising the same technique regarding the application of ink (with the use of an atomiser rather than a traditional ink brush) on Xuan paper; the core arrangement shifts from allegorical mountain motifs to something beyond the sphere of nature. Here, an interpretation of the music of Arnold Schönberg leads to a creation of works that seek beyond the horizon, beyond the limit of the sky and into the black mass of the universe. The imagination pursues the outer realms of space, journeying on an odyssey - where recognition of forms and elemental shapes become the interface between the realms of Earth and outer space.
Outer space, the expanse that exists beyond the Earth and between celestial bodies - not completely empty - is a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles, predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, neutrinos, dust, and cosmic rays.
Observations suggest that the majority of the mass-energy in the observable universe is a vacuum energy of space, which astronomers label 'dark energy'. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the Universe, but even galaxies and star systems consist almost entirely of empty space. Thus, this series probes the boundaries of what is visibly and indissolubly a feature of our universe against elaborations of theorems and scientific notions.
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As a side note: the series title 'Verklärte Nacht' refers to the string sextet composed by Arnold Schönberg in 1899. Transfigured Night, an instrumental realisation inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem of the same name written in 1896, is a highly articulated single movement work that can be regarded as a chamber music tone poem. The close literary association, the use of an extended single movement form and the nearly expressionist exploration of a personal, inner psychological state characterise Transfigured Night as a harbinger of new 20th century tendencies despite its Romantic cast. Though not explicitly marked in the score, the purely instrumental music is closely organised around the five stanzas of the poem yielding five distinctive sections of highly charged and deeply expressive music.