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EVOLUTION SYMPHONY
for Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra
by DANIEL NAZARETH
A Synopsis
PART I: THE HUMAN ODYSSEY THROUGH TIME AND SPACE (ORCHESTRAL, approx. 17 min)
From the dark, deep recesses of outer space, we hear a male (yang) motive. Exploding into a first Big Bang, it sets the Milky Way in motion to wisps of music from the Cosmic Dance in Part VI.
We hear a second, a female (yin) motive, that explodes into another Big Bang, sending the planet Earth and its Moon rotating and revolving around the Sun.
Three fundamental processes of creation: THE GOLDEN MEASURE, THE FIBONACCI SERIES and DNA are illustrated in sound as myriad forms of life evolve on planet Earth.
A main theme announces the Homo Sapiens Male in all his blustery virility. A secondary theme introduces the Homo Sapiens Female with her kindness and warmth.
There ensue vivid conflicts between the forces of good and evil. Discoveries, inventions, social and cultural achievements vie against intolerance, racism, unchecked greed and religious fanaticisms. Under the innocuous guise of a double fugue, two extremist groups confront each other in a showdown that triggers the 9/11 2001 terrorist tragedy. Finally, unchecked greed errupts into the October 2008 financial crisis.
While the blue Planet Earth still stays its course, its Homo Sapiens Male and Female inhabitants, when we meet them again in the Recap, now seem markedly sobered and matured. Together, they renew their “audacity of hope” for a more peaceful and better tomorrow.
PART II: FOUR CREATION TRADITIONS (BARITONE, CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA, approx. 20 min)
TEXT: DANIEL NAZARETH
1) THE JUDEO CHRISTIAN TRADITION
In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.
And the Earth was without form and bare,
And darkness reigned the depths of the abyss.
And God’s spirit moved upon the face of the water.
And God spoke: “Let there be light.”
And there was light.
Day He called that which was bright,
The Darkness He called Night.
The next five days He made the sky,
The sun, the moon, the stars that fly.
The land with trees and birds and bees,
The seas with fish and whales and eels.
In His image He made a man and a woman.
He bade them: “Multiply and be fruitful”.
Content with all He had created,
The seventh day God blessed, and He rested.
Praise the Lord! All you voices!
Glory to God in all eternity.
Amen. Amen.
2) THE MAYAN CREATION TRADITION
The Gods from their abode in heaven
Gazed down at an Earth, forlorn.
“No-one gives us thanks and praise,
We need to have a human race!”
The yellow God fashioned a man out of clay.
It dissolved in water and bent like hay.
The red God carved a man out of wood.
It could stand and float, but no fire withstood.
The black God suggested: “Let us use gold,
So our man be bright, shiny and bold.”
Their man of gold survived water and fire,
But was hard and cold with no speech nor desire.
The fourth God used his fingers, that were colorless,
To make humans in his own likeness.
Human toil and kindness, worship and praise,
Made the Gods proud of the human race.
3) THE HINDU CREATION TRADITION
God Brahma, the Creator,
Set his eyes on Sarasvati.
She refused his attentions,
Her focus was the mind, not the body.
Amorous dreams, bursting their seams,
Brahma’s four heads feasted on her beauty.
He even assumed a fifth head,
To indulge his debauchery!
Sarasvati turned into a cow.
She hoped he wouldn’t find her now!
Brahma turned into a bull,
And the fields with cattle were full!
She turned into a mare,
He turned into a horse.
Whatever form she chose to escape,
His lust for her that form would take.
God Shiva, the Destroyer,
Was outraged at this behaviour.
He attacked Brahma, fuming red,
And tore off his lustful fifth head.
Brahma now cured of his wanton lust,
Sought a ritual Yagna his life to adjust.
Sarasvati agreed to become his wife.
Together, they lived a long and fruitful life.
4) THE GREEK CREATION TRADITION
Somewhere in the primordial web,
Black-winged Nyx laid a golden egg.
Aeons later, Eros did hatch,
As God of Love, to make a match.
Half his shell became Uranus, the Sky,
The other half, Gaia, the Earth.
Uranus would covet Gaia,
So a pantheon of Gods take birth.
Prometheus and Epimetheus by Zeus were sent,
Mortal life on Earth to invent:
Man and animal to create,
Each to give a gift innate.
Epimetheus squandered the gifts away,
Prometheus had nothing left for man but clay.
He gave man upright stance and stolen fire,
This arroused God Zeus to anger!
Pandora, a beautiful woman was made,
A box was given, ‘not to open’ was bade.
But the box she did open, spilling the weeds
Of disease, racism, envy, pain and greed.
Luckily, just so humankind might cope,
The box also hid an audacity called hope!
PART III: FIVE SCIENTIFIC EVOLUTION THEORIES (CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA approx. 11 min.) SUNG IN FUGUE TO A CANTUS FIRMUS BY
LEONARDO DA VINCI
TEXT: DANIEL NAZARETH
The miracle that we are,
let us try to fathom.
Knowing where we come from,
can enlighten where we go.
Here some thoughts:
from CHARLES DARWIN:
"Environmental pressures select mutations in a gene-pool.
This natural selection ensures the survival of the fittest."
HENRI BERGSON:
"The survival of a species is a creative, not mechanical process.
One creative mutation gets selected from several mutations."
LYNN MARGULIS:
"Through Endo-symbiosis pro-caryotic cells turn into eu-caryotic cells.
Life took over the globe not by combat, but by net-working!"
PITER KROPOTKIN:
"Mutual aid and not mutual struggle propels our multi species evolution.
All of our human ethics derive from this mutual aid principle."
TEILHARD DE CHARDIN:
"Our noo-sphere of collective consciousness crowns the bio and eco spheres.
With this repository of knowledge and wisdom we survive or we perish collectively."
RENE DESCARTES: "Cogito ergo sum!"
PART IV: AN ANCIENT SUFI PARABEL (BOY SOPRANO AND GIRL SOPRANO WITH ORCHESTRA approx. 5 min)
TEXT: DANIEL NAZARETH
Boy:
O’er hills and valleys high and low,
Rustling, rippling have I flowed,
But how the desert I should cross
To understand I’m at a loss.
Girl:
Let the burning fire in the sand
Envapour you to the wind at hand,
And over the desert you will float
Steady, secure, as in a boat.
Boy:
O’er hills and valleys high and low,
Rustling, rippling have I flowed,
As stream of water I was alive,
If I don’t flow I fear I’ll die.
Girl:
As dew, as rain you will survive,
To live again another life.
We all some day, some time must go,
To come again, to do some more.
Boy:
So let the fire in the sand,
Envapour me across the land.
And let the winds as high they soar,
Carry me to another shore.
Boy and Girl:
O’er hills and valleys high and low,
Rustling, rippling have we flowed,
Another shape, another shore,
We’ll live again, we know, we’re sure.
PART V: ABOVE AND BEYOND (BARITONE AND ORCHESTRA, 10 min.)
TEXT: THEODOR JEWETT
I bring fresh showers to the thirsting flowers,
From the seas, from the streams.
I bear light shade for the leaves,
When laid in their noon day dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews,
That waken the sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the pasing hail,
And whiten the green plains under.
Then again I dissolve into rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
For I am the daughter of earth and water,
A fledging of the sky.
I pass through the pores of oceans and shores,
I change but I cannot die.
PART VI: "IF LOVE BE AN OCEAN WITHOUT A SHORE,
THEREIN TO DROWN I YEARN EVERMORE"
“AMORE SOLLA MI FA REMIRARE,
LA SOL MI FA SOLLECITA” (Leonardo da Vinci)
(ORCHESTRAL, approx. 15 min)
This ADAGIO advocates unrelenting love, in the face of challenges and errors, as pivotal to all human endeavor and achievement.
PART VII: TRANSCENDENTAL COSMIC DANCE (CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA, approx. 11 min)
TEXT: JALAL-UD DIN RUMI
Chorus:
"We came whirling out of nothingness,
scattering stars like dust.
The stars make a circle,
And in their midst we dance."
700 YEAR OLD EVOLUTION POETRY (IN ORIGINAL PHARSI) BY RUMI:
Rumi, Masnavi, III, 3901 - 3907
“I died to mineral and joined the realm of plants.
I died to vegetable and joined the animal.
I died in the animal realm and became man.
So why fear? When has dying made me less?
In turn I will die from human form
To sprout an angel’s head and wings.
And them from angel-form I will ebb away
For ‘all things perish but the face of God’.
And once I am sacrificed from angel form
I am what imagination cannot contain.
So let me be naught! Naughtness, like an organ,
Sings to me: ‘We verily return to Him’.
Death is like the fount of life in darkness hid.”
With each of the original 7 Rumi verses depicting the 7 stages of existence, the music transposes in chromatic ascendancy through the 7 steps of the diatonic C-Major scale, as it crescendos to a dazzling climax.
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